Kent State shooting victim seeks action based on tape
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/05/kent_state_shooting_victims_co.html
By John Mangels, The Plain Dealer
May 10, 2010
One of the Kent State University students shot by Ohio National
Guardsmen during antiwar protests on May 4, 1970 is seeking a new
investigation of the incident, based on evidence uncovered by The
Plain Dealer.
Alan Canfora said Monday he will ask U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder and Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to review a
40-year-old amateur audio recording that captured the moments before
the shooting. Two forensic audio experts who enhanced and analyzed
the recording at the newspaper's request determined last week that it
contains a voice ordering the Guardsmen to prepare to fire.
The previously undetected command, if verified, may help explain why
the Guardsmen fired 67 times in a 13-second fusillade that killed
four students and wounded nine others.
Two trials and a presidential commission's investigation could not
determine what initiated the gunfire, although the presidential
commission concluded that "the indiscriminate firing of rifles into a
crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary,
unwarranted and inexcusable."
Canfora, who directs the Kent May 4 Center, an educational
organization, said he and current KSU students from the May 4 Task
Force will deliver a copy of the recording Tuesday to the Cleveland
office of U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach. Both Dettelbach's and
Cordray's offices declined to comment.
KSU student Terry Strubbe made the recording on the morning of the
protest, placing the microphone of his reel-to-reel tape machine in
the window of his dorm room overlooking the campus Commons. The
30-minute tape contains chanting, exploding tear gas canisters and
other sounds of the escalating protest.
In the seconds before the Guard's gunfire volley erupts, a male voice
says, "Guard! All right, prepare to fire!" according to the analysis
by New Jersey-based forensic audio experts Stuart Allen and Tom Owen.
Another voice, presumably in the crowd, shouts "Get down!" A voice
then repeats "Guard!" followed immediately by gunfire.
"I'm hoping the U.S. and state government will acknowledge the
long-denied truth about the Kent State tragedy," Canfora said Monday.
"We hope they'll acknowledge, as we've always contended, that this
was an intentional massacre committed against unarmed students."
Canfora said he and others may file civil lawsuits based on the new
information in an attempt to increase the compensation that the state
of Ohio paid to the victims and their families. A 1979 settlement of
previous civil lawsuits awarded $675,000 to be divided among the
wounded and relatives of the dead.
Nearly half the money went to Dean Kahler, who was paralyzed from the
chest down. The parents of the four students who died received
$15,000 each. The other wounded collected between $15,000 and $42,000
depending on their injuries.
Canfora, who was shot in the wrist, said he was not concerned about
his own compensation, but that those who were severely wounded and
the families of the dead deserved more.
Kahler and Thomas Grace, who lost part of his left foot in the
shootings, both said Monday that they supported inquiries that might
reveal more about what happened.
"We need to find the truth," said Kahler, although he believes the
government should examine the original Strubbe tape, rather than the
copy that The Plain Dealer's audio consultants reviewed. "Contacting
the attorney general at this point might be a little premature,
unless the attorney general deems that it's important to get the
original and analyze it themselves," Kahler said.
Strubbe and colleagues are working on their own analysis of the
original tape.
In a separate development Monday, Laurel Krause, whose sister Allison
was one of the four killed by the Guard's gunfire, called for
Guardsmen who were present on May 4 to come forward and provide their
account of what happened.
Krause helped organize a web-based project called the Kent State
Truth Tribunal at www.truthtribunal.org that is recording and
preserving the stories of those involved in the shootings.
"Now that we have documented proof of the order to prepare to fire,
we're feeling the time is ripe for the truth to come out," Krause
said Monday. "It's important for the tribunal to collect all the
stories, not just those who willingly came forward, but a full and
complete picture" that includes accounts from Guardsmen who were
involved in the shootings and may have knowledge of an order.
"They can contact us with anonymity and privacy," she said. "This is
a healing thing."
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