Brian VanDeMark

the atmosphere there dramatically.

The students become more vocal in terms of the epithets that they hurl vocally, the guardsmen, and some start beginning throwing stones and rocks.

And then the Canterbury orders the guardsmen in a line to disperse the crowd.

Well, it's the Common, which is a lower area below Blanket Hill, a little bit west of Blanket Hill, in front of Taylor Hall, which was a very large university building that lay essentially at the conjunction of the Commons and Blanket Hill.

I think the rationale, the justification at that moment was the governor has prohibited assemblies.

And we are enforcing the governor's edict prohibiting assemblies.

And once the guard is moved out,

that's when things escalate even further.

It's at that point for the students.

Well, in the sense that the students become more confrontational

They begin throwing projectiles toward the guardsmen and the guardsmen fire tear gas as they move across the commons up Blanket Hill.

And I don't want to get into microscopic detail, but the fundamental point is they're coming into close physical proximity with one another now.

And these guardsmen have live bullets and high velocity rifles that the students don't realize.

And the students are becoming more aggressive in terms of their resistance to the dispersal order.

Well, eventually they'll go over Blanket Hill down to a playing field area.

And adjacent to that is a parking lot from which a lot of students will roll rocks and stones and other projectiles at the guardsmen.

And the guardsmen are effectively, they're cornered because that playing field had a wire fence around it, which meant that they couldn't go any further.

And they felt that the students were beginning to surround them, which I think increased their anxiety and their insecurity.

Well, the guardsmen, while they're on the playing field, are ordered by Canterbury to point their rifles toward the students in the parking lot, but only as a deterrent, symbolic deterrent.

They weren't ordered to fire.