Mr. BELIN. Did you stand or just look through your cab window?
Mr. SCOGGINS. I just looked and saw he was going down there.
Mr. BELIN. About how close was this man to you when you saw him, the
closest when you saw him coming through the bushes, approximately.
Mr. SCOGGINS. Oh, I would say from here to that chair down there.
Mr. BELIN. Pardon?
Mr. SCOGGINS. About that chair down there.
Mr. BELIN. 12 feet?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. Referring to your tracing of the path that the man later
found to be Oswald followed, he went through the lower of these two
bushes there, did he? He went right through it?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Yes, sir. You see there is an opening in there.
Mr. DULLES. But he didn't apparently take the opening, according to
this, because he went right through the bushes.
Mr. SCOGGINS. Well, because I didn't see any opening in there. Was
there an opening in there?
Mr. BELIN. Mr. Dulles, for the record, when you are referring to 523,
there is an opening between the shrubbery, but within the shrubbery
itself there is an opening, and I think it will appear if you----
Mr. DULLES. I think the witness testified he heard the bushes move.
Mr. SCOGGINS. Yes.
Mr. BELIN. Yes. But the opening within the bushes, is it a large
opening or a small opening between the bushes?
Mr. SCOGGINS. It is not too large, but a man can get through very
easily by going through.
Mr. DULLES. But he hits the bushes as he goes through?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. I see. That makes it clear.
Mr. BELIN. It is not the wide opening between the two sets of bushes.
Mr. DULLES. It is not quite as wide.
Mr. SCOGGINS. It is an opening between the bushes themselves, like
maybe someone had planted three bushes and maybe one of them had died
to break the shrubbery.
Mr. DULLES. That has happened to me.
Mr. BELIN. What I am saying, Mr. Dulles, on Exhibit 523 there are two
groups of bushes. Within the lower group of bushes there is a slight
space to which the witness is referring.
Mr. DULLES. I see. It is not the space here.
Mr. BELIN. It is not the space between the two sets of bushes.
Mr. DULLES. At this point do you recall whether he was running or
walking or what pace was he going at?
Mr. SCOGGINS. He was going at a kind of lope.
Mr. DULLES. Lope?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Yes, what you might call a little trot. He did not seem
in too big a hurry, but he wasn't walking.
Mr. BELIN. Mr. Scoggins, you last saw the man when he was at the point
that you let the line stop at on Exhibit 523, is that correct?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Yes, sir. That would be in the approximate location.
Mr. BELIN. What did you do?
Mr. SCOGGINS. I got on my radio.
Mr. BELIN. And then you told us about calling your dispatcher?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Yes.
Mr. BELIN. What did you do after that?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Well, I got back in my cab to call my dispatcher, you see.
Mr. BELIN. Yes.
Mr. SCOGGINS. And then I got out of the cab and run down there; the
ambulance had already arrived by the time I got there, and they were
in the process of picking the man up, and they had done had him, was
putting him on the stretcher when I got there, and they put him in the
ambulance and took him away, and there was someone that got on the
radio at that time and they told him he was going to report it, so they
told him to get off the air, that it had already been reported, and he
picks up the officer's pistol that was laying on the ground, apparently
fell out of his holster when he fell, and says, "Come on, let's go see
if we can find him."
Mr. DULLES. Before you ask the next question, I wonder if I can ask one
question here. Do you know whether the ambulance came as a result of
the message you sent?
Mr. SCOGGINS. No, I sure don't.
Mr. DULLES. You do not know?
Mr. SCOGGINS. No.
Mr. DULLES. From the time angle, do you think that could have happened?
Mr. SCOGGINS. It was awful fast if it did. They got there awfully
quickly if they did.
Mr. DULLES. You don't know of any other warning going in; you put your
warning in, and that is all you know about it?
Mr. SCOGGINS. That is all I know about it at that time, and I do know
this other gentleman called after I got up to the car, he called in,
and they told him it had already been.
(Off the record discussion.)
Mr. BELIN. Mr. Scoggins, I started to ask you about the revolver of the
policeman when you came and saw him. This was in his holster or on the
street?
Mr. SCOGGINS. It was on the street whenever I saw it.
Mr. BELIN. Do you know where it was with relation to the policeman's
body?
Mr. SCOGGINS. It was there pretty close to his body, you know, like
kind of under his body when they picked him up. It either fell out of
his holster or was laying on the ground, one, I don't know which.
Mr. BELIN. What did you see him do? This man came up and picked up the
policeman's gun. He picked it up and said, "Let's go see if we can find
him?"
Mr. SCOGGINS. I thought the man was a kind of police, Secret Service
or something, I didn't know, and I take him and we drove around over
the neighborhood looking, and I still didn't know what kind--I still
thought he was connected with the police department in some way.
Mr. BELIN. What route did you take as you drove over the neighborhood?
Mr. SCOGGINS. I couldn't tell you.
Mr. BELIN. You can't tell us the route you took over the neighborhood?
Mr. SCOGGINS. I was doing the driving and he was doing the directing.
Mr. BELIN. He directed you where to go?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Actually, I couldn't say where he was going.
Mr. BELIN. All right.
Representative FORD. Were you in your cab?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Yes.
Representative FORD. When you saw the pistol it wasn't in Officer
Tippit's hands?
Mr. SCOGGINS. No, sir; oh, he never did have a pistol in his hand, as
far as I know.
Mr. BELIN. You saw him when he was falling?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Yes; he was holding his stomach.
Mr. BELIN. You saw him holding his stomach as he fell?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Yes.
Mr. BELIN. Did he have anything in his hands?
Mr. SCOGGINS. If he did I couldn't see it, and I don't think he ever
got to his pistol from what I saw.
Mr. BELIN. Did you see the man with the gun as he opened his gun, as he
was going to the west on--up 10th Street at all after the shooting?
Mr. SCOGGINS. No, I didn't see him.
Mr. BELIN. After you went around to look for the man, did you find him
at all?
Mr. SCOGGINS. No. We drove around and asked several people, but we did
not see anybody that looked like him.
Mr. BELIN. Then what did you do?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Well, by that time there was more policemen there than
you can shake a stick at. They were all over that place, and we stopped
the cab.
Mr. BELIN. At about what time, do you know offhand?
Mr. SCOGGINS. About 1:30, I guess, approximately 1:30; between 1:30
and 1:35, I would say. We cruised around several blocks looking for
him, and we--one of these police cars came by and this fellow who was
with me stopped it, and we got back in the car and went back up to the
scene, and he give them the pistol, and that time is when I found out
he wasn't an officer.
Mr. BELIN. Then what happened, or what did you do?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Well, they was questioning a lot of people and
questioning everybody, and they was talking, and so I went back and got
on my radio and contacted my supervisor, and they wanted me to come
into the office and make a statement, and so I did, the cab company.
One of the supervisors got a statement of it, and he asked me did the
police, did I give them a statement, and I told him no because, and he
said, "Well, why didn't you?" I said, "They didn't ask me. They talked
with everybody else."
So the next day they took me down and put me through a lineup, showed
me a lineup of four people, and I identified the one that I had seen
the day before.
Mr. BELIN. Now, let me ask you this question. First of all, do you
remember, or can you describe the man you saw on November 22 with the
gun?
Mr. SCOGGINS. He was a medium-height fellow with, kind of a slender
look, and approximately, I said 25, 26 years old, somewhere along there.
Mr. BELIN. Do you remember the color of his hair?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Yes. It was light; let's see, was it light or not--medium
brown, I would say.
Mr. BELIN. Pardon?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Medium brown, I would say--now, wait a minute. Now,
medium brown or dark.
Mr. BELIN. Medium brown or dark hair?
Mr. SCOGGINS. Yes.
Mr. BELIN. Was he a Negro or a white man?
Mr. SCOGGINS. White, light complected, not real brown.
Mr. BELIN. Was he fat, average build or thin?