The only known audio and video of the Kent State shootings 54 years ago
Alan Canfora, one of the wounded students, explained the recordings
Yesterday was the 54th anniversary of the tragedy at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, when four students were shot and killed in a hail of gunfire from the Ohio National Guard: Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder. Nine other students survived their wounds.
Several years ago, a trusted friend and source sent me the attached grainy recording of the actual moment of the shootings. I did not know that such a film existed.
When I first saw it, I assumed that the scene was memorialized by a camera in the Tri-Towers building on the periphery of the shooting site. I had an office there while I was in graduate school and working as a graduate assistant in 1974. (In May 1970, I was an undergraduate student at the nearby University of Akron where I served as student body president from 1972-1973.)
The Guardsmen who opened fire are on top of the hill and to the left of Taylor Hall. In this 56-second film, the audio begins immediately. The video starts at 00.13
Wanting to know more about what I was seeing, I contacted my friend, Alan Canfora, one of the nine students shot and wounded.
Alan was the most articulate and knowledgeable spokesperson about the Kent State tragedy. He was a founding member of the May 4 Task Force and the long-time director of the Kent May 4 Center. Nobody in the world knew more than Alan.
Below is a famous picture of Alan—taken by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer John Filo on Kent State’s campus on May 4, 1970—courageously standing alone and waving his “black flag of despair and anger,” just days after he attended the funeral of one of his closest childhood friends who had been recently killed in Vietnam. A few minutes after this historic photo was taken, Alan was hit in the right wrist by a bullet fired from an M-1 rifle as he dove for cover behind an oak tree when the National Guard opened fire into the crowd of students.
After receiving my inquiry, Alan responded, writing:
Dan. . . . This 1970 video by KSU student Chris Abell is synched with a simultaneous audio recording made by student Terry Strubbe during the 13 seconds of deadly guardsmen's gunfire. The video was originally Super-8 home movie film with a view from Abell's Tri-Towers dorm window. It's the only video of the shooting incident. The Strubbe recording includes about 29 minutes of the May 4 confrontation including the rally, tear gas dispersal and finally the 13 seconds of the massacre. It's the only complete audio of the gunfire. . . .
The Abell film was a half-mile distant view. It shows the general movement of students before, during & after the massacre. The Strubbe recorder was only about 250 feet from the shooting site. . . .
The command to fire can be heard with the audio before the barrage of 67 shots.
For the 50th anniversary of the Kent State shootings on May 4, 2020, Alan asked me and several other former KSU students to submit written statements to commemorate the event. I wrote:
Today, we remember the four students who were shot and killed, along with the nine students who were shot and wounded during that horrible, thirteen-second, 67-round barrage by the Ohio National Guard who fired indiscriminately into a crowd of unarmed students. And we also commemorate those whose lives were forever changed by the impact of that tragedy, including those of you who were there on campus at that moment, as well as those of us who were not. . . .
We also honor our friend, Alan Canfora, who has spent his entire adult life fighting for justice while memorializing that tragic day in American history and working tirelessly to make sure that it never happens again. . . . Well done, Alan. Thank you for all of your outstanding work. You have made a difference.
Sadly, on December 20, 2020, after a brief illness, 71-year-old Alan Canfora died. He is remembered and missed.
How sad that for the majority of the police in the USA they are not trained in their oath to the Constitution - if they were terrible events like this would not have taken place. And indeed they would never have been able to lockdown and inject Americans. Or mask them. Very few police and sheriff departments stood for the Constitution-but those that did said no to the Federal government's tyranny.