Houston McCoy
Houston McCoy was a police officer in Austin Texas who shot Charles Whitman Jr., a man who had just killed 18 innocent people.
Scholars would later identify McCoy as one of the first police officers to describe shooting someone who seemed to want to die - a phenomenon now known as suicide by cop.
Serial killers and spree killers were not a recognized threat in 1966, when the shooting occurred, and Austin police lacked both the training and equipment to respond. Scholars who documented the creation of SWAT teams have written about McCoy and Raymond Ramirez's lack of training and equipment as one of the triggers for the creation of SWAT teams.
Scholars have also identified McCoy as one of the earliest diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Early life
Daughter Monika joins the Austin Police Department
In 2016, 50 years after the shooting, McCoy's daughter Monika McCoy, joined the Austin Police Department.[1][2] She was 42, and her children were adults, when she joined the force. She says that, even in Kindergarten, pictures of her father, in uniform, inspired her to become a police officer.[3]
The Tower is visible from her beat, the West Campus neighborhood.[3]
References
- ↑ Greg Flakus (2016-08-04). "Daughter of Policeman Who Helped End Texas Rampage Now Patrols Same Beat". Voice of America (Austin, Texas). Archived from the original on 2017-05-26. https://web.archive.org/web/20170526001755/https://www.voanews.com/a/daughter-policeman-end-texas-mass-shooting-patrols-same-beat/3448005.html. Retrieved 2022-02-23. "Putting themselves at great risk, the elder McCoy, using a shotgun, and fellow officer Ramiro Martinez, using a handgun, located Whitman in the northwest corner of the tower's observation deck and shot him dead."
- ↑ "UT Tower sniper hero’s daughter joins police force". KHOU (Austin, Texas). 2013-12-14. https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/texas/ut-tower-sniper-heros-daughter-joins-police-force/285-320622131. Retrieved 2022-02-23. "Monika McCoy was one of 33 cadets to receive their badges on Friday. Her father didn t live to see the day, having died a year ago at age 73. But Monika McCoy says she s sure that he and her mother are proud of her from beyond."
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Jazleen Shokar (2016-08-01). "Officer who shot sniper remembered by daughter as a family man". The Daily Texan. https://thedailytexan.com/2016/08/01/officer-who-shot-sniper-remembered-by-daughter-as-a-family-man/. Retrieved 2022-02-23. "Monika McCoy, now an APD officer herself, said that around the 40th anniversary when a lot of the police officers, victims and their family members were reunited, her father started talking about the Tower shooting more and she began to understand his role and the impact it had on him."
