Assassination of John F. Kennedy President Kennedy as his motorcade continued down Elm Street. About 80% of the witnesses recalled hearing three shots. A minority of the witnesses recognized the first gunshot they heard as weapon fire, but there was hardly any reaction to the first shot from a majority of the people in the crowd or those riding in the motorcade. Many bystanders later said that they heard what they first thought to either be a firecracker or the backfire of one of the vehicles shortly after the President had begun waving. Although some close witnesses recalled seeing the limousine slow down, nearly stop,
Timeline of the John F. Kennedy assassination the NBC bulletins have been assumed "lost" as they did not start recording coverage until minutes later. However, audio engineer Phil Gries rolled tape on a set of audio recordings on a 1/4" reel to reel audiotape recorder. These have been donated to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. However, NBC, in its book on the coverage of the assassination, mentioned the bulletins.) At 1:53 p.m. (EST), NBC broke into programming with a NBC Network bumper slide and Chet Huntley and Bill Ryan began informing the viewers what was going on as it happened. However, NBC's camera was not ready