Senator Robert Kennedy is shot as he leaves the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Kennedy had finished speaking at a Democratic Party campaign function, having just won the California primary. The shooting took place only two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in Memphis, Tennessee.
RTÉ announced the shooting of Senator Robert Kennedy in a radio news bulletin on 5 June 1968. The newsreader is Charles Mitchel.
Senator Kennedy has been shot.
A reporter walking behind Kennedy as he exits the ballroom heard the gun go off, and switched on his tape recorder, capturing the scene and the chaos that ensued.
On hearing the news, Cardinal William Conway expressed the feelings of the Irish people,
What can one say? Our first thoughts go to his first wife and family. It’s obvious from the news media that ordinary men and women in America are horrified at what has happened, and heartbroken at this great plague of violence, which has stricken their country.
The next day, United States President Lyndon B Johnson, reads from his letter to the President of the US Senate and Speaker of the US House of Representatives,
...the nation cries out to the conscience of the Congress. Criminal violence from the muzzle of a gun. Surely this must be clear beyond question. The hour has come for the Congress to enact a strong and effective gun control law.
An excerpt from the RTÉ Radio programme 'This Was 1968' broadcast on 31 December 1968.
