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 their main headquarters in New York, WABC-TV's first bulletin came from Ed Silverman at 1:42 p.m. EST, also interrupting a rerun of "Father Knows Best" in the Mountain Time Zone on the ABC-TV network; ABC-TV was not feeding programming to its affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone at that hour. Three minutes later, Don Pardo broke into WNBC-TV's local rerun of "Bachelor Father" with the news, saying (reading AP bulletin) 'PRESIDENT KENNEDY WAS SHOT TODAY JUST AS HIS MOTORCADE LEFT DOWNTOWN DALLAS. MRS. KENNEDY JUMPED UP AND GRABBED MR. KENNEDY. SHE CRIED 'OH NO!' THE MOTORCADE SPED ON.' (Videotape of