The network immediately dispatched all available reporters to the scene. Like others around the city, Aren had felt the blast miles away. It seemed like thunder, but the Oklahoma City sky was bright blue. Could it have been a demolition? There was always building work going on downtown.
When colleagues said it was an explosion, Aren went to find a television in the break room and saw the helicopter footage. The building where she'd left her daughter was in ruins. Aren called her parents and a colleague drove her as close as they could get.
When they reached the building, Aren and her family found a scene of chaos. Downtown Oklahoma City looked like a war zone. Scores of buildings had been damaged by the blast. No-one had the answers they needed. So they headed to local hospitals to try and find Baylee there.
About an hour and a half after the explosion, a message came over Chris Fields's radio to evacuate. They thought they'd found another bomb. Most had assumed this was a natural gas leak or an accident. No one dared to imagine this could have been done intentionally. The news of the bomb scare sent people running from the scene. Among them was reporter Robin Marsh, who was broadcasting live when an official ran toward her telling her to evacuate.
We've got to move further away'," she remembers. As the chaos unfolded, local news stations became a vital source of information. They told people who to call and where to go for help.
But in a place like Oklahoma City, the tragedy hit close to home. Some of those reporting, including Robin, knew and lost people inside that day. By , Ruth Schwab had arrived at the hospital. She had tried walking out the building at first, but with the stairs thick with debris she was eventually passed to a rescuer and carried out. Ruth was still blinded and doctors knew they were in a race to save her eyes.
It wasn't until the second scare that Kevin McCullouch moved around the building and saw where all the injured people had been pouring from. He'd been on murder calls and traffic accidents before but had never seen devastation like this. The main job for firefighters was search and rescue. At one point, as he walked around the building, a police officer appeared in front of him with a critical infant in his arms.
Trained in first aid, Chris offered to take her. He cleared her throat, which was blocked with concrete or insulation dust debris, to try and open her airway. But with what appeared to be a skull fracture too, there was no sign of life. Chris carried the baby's tiny frame to an ambulance.
The paramedic looked at Chris: his vehicle was already full. There were already people on its floor and lying on the ground outside waiting to be transported. The firefighter held and looked down at her as he waited. Chris had a son close to her age and his thoughts immediately went to her family: "I was just looking at her thinking: 'Somebody's world is getting ready to be turned upside down today'. He would not realise it for hours, but two photographers had captured that exact moment.
The image of an Oklahoma City firefighter cradling a lifeless baby, covered in dust and blood, became the most famous of the day. The image, which we have chosen not to reprint, conveyed both the cruelty of the day and the city's loss of innocence. But for Aren Almon, the loss was more than symbolic. Chris had been holding her daughter. Throughout the morning, she and her parents had bounced between hospitals trying to get information.
It was only when Baylee's paediatrician came around the corner with a priest that Aren's worst fears were realised. As a single mother, her life had revolved around her daughter. Nobody in my family had ever died," she says. Reports spread throughout Wednesday that the bomb could have been linked to international terrorism. But for Aren, details on who was responsible didn't matter at that point. As the day wore on, journalist Robin Marsh had ended up in a church with families still searching for loved ones.
She got home at about after a gruelling hour day covering events. While Kevin McCullough continued to work at the bomb site throughout the day, trying to help victims, he had no idea that his wife had been taken to hospital in labour. His fourth and youngest child, Jordan, was born early in the afternoon. But I was down at the bombing site helping others deal with the loss," he says, his voice breaking. By Wednesday evening the death toll had climbed into the dozens, with hundreds more injured and missing.
The last person to survive was a year-old girl pulled from the rubble that night. In the days after, the number confirmed dead only grew. As news of the attack spread, the images of Baylee and Chris spread around the world. The image of her dead daughter became inescapable. On every television show, every news station, on the front of T-shirts, on coffee mugs.
It was everywhere and it was devastating. One of the photographers, whose version was distributed by the Associated Press news agency, received a Pulitzer prize for the shot. Aren says she continues to feel ostracised from other families, who she says felt their loved ones were forgotten amid the notoriety around Baylee.
I can't say how it's used… when you die your rights are abolished. Every year Aren marks what would have been Baylee's birthday with a big family dinner. Over the years, the firefighter who tried to save her daughter has become a close friend. I took on a little responsibility for that.
Chris and other fire officials spent the first day searching for survivors. But after a couple of days, it was clear the operation had turned to recovery in order to help families get closure. It took years for him to process what he went through. Eight or nine years after the bombing, everything came to a head. He had been helping someone build a pool, when it started raining. The smell of wet concrete took him back to 19 April As evening fell on Oklahoma City that day, the bright spring morning turned to rain.
Over the next few months, after the pool incident, Chris felt like he was losing control. Eventually he sought help and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He retired from the Oklahoma Fire Department in , after 31 years of service, and now travels around the US speaking to first responders about mental health. In the weeks after the bombing, the community counted its loss.
On top of those who died, many had life-altering or critical injuries. A doctor had to amputate one woman's leg with a pocket knife to free her from the rubble. Ruth was among those whose recovery took years. About a week after the bombing doctors had to remove her right eye. She had dozens of stitches in her face and her jaw had to be wired shut. Her family kept the television on mute at first and tip-toed around her questions over who had been found.
It took more than a month for the final victims to be recovered. Some bodies were discovered only after the unstable remains of the Murrah building were demolished on 23 May. Those who lost loved ones then had to wait years before justice was finalised. Suspicion had initially fallen on Middle Eastern terrorists, given the World Trade Centre bombing two years before. But after finding part of a van, investigators were eventually able to trace its rental back to Timothy McVeigh.
They were then surprised to find out he had been in custody all along, having been pulled over for unrelated charges while fleeing the city. He and Terry Nichols, a former army colleague who shared his anti-government views, were indicted in August on murder and conspiracy charges. A third man worked with federal authorities for a lesser charge. But even today, conspiracy theories about a wider plot by the right-wing persist. McVeigh was executed three months to the day before the attacks of 11 September , which eclipsed the Oklahoma bombing as the deadliest terror attack on US soil.
Army and proved a disciplined and meticulous soldier. It was during this time that he befriended Terry Nichols, a fellow soldier who, though 13 years his senior, shared his survivalist interests. In early , McVeigh served in the Persian Gulf War and was decorated with several medals for a brief combat mission. Despite these honors, he was discharged from the army at the end of the year, one of many casualties of the U.
Perhaps also because of the end of the Cold War, McVeigh shifted his ideology from a hatred of foreign communist governments to a suspicion of the U. In early , Nichols and McVeigh planned an attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, which housed, among other federal agencies, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms ATF —the agency that had launched the initial raid on the Branch Davidian compound in On April 19, , the two-year anniversary of the disastrous end to the Waco standoff, McVeigh parked a Ryder rental truck loaded with a diesel-fuel-fertilizer bomb outside the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and fled. Minutes later, the massive bomb exploded, killing people.
On June 2, , McVeigh was convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy, and on August 14, under the unanimous recommendation of the jury, he was sentenced to die by lethal injection.
In December , McVeigh asked a federal judge to stop all appeals of his convictions and to set a date for his execution by lethal injection at the U. Penitentiary at Terre Haute, Indiana. In a federal trial, Terry Nichols was found guilty on one count of conspiracy and eight counts of involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to life in prison. In a later Oklahoma state trial, he was charged with counts of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree manslaughter for the death of an unborn child, and one count of aiding in the placement of a bomb near a public building.
On May 26, , he was convicted of all charges and sentenced to consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! His resignation came amid rumors that he would soon be under investigation by the United States and Sweden Before the Civil War, citizenship was often limited to Native Americans of one-half or less On June 2, , Queen Elizabeth II is formally crowned monarch of the United Kingdom in a lavish ceremony steeped in traditions that date back a millennium.
In an event that is generally regarded as marking the end of the Civil War, Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, signs the surrender terms offered by Union negotiators. The year-old race car driver Bruce McLaren dies in a crash while testing an experimental car of his own design at a track in Goodwood, England on June 2, Born in Auckland, New Zealand, McLaren contracted a childhood hip disease that would keep him in hospitals for On June 2, , Babe Ruth, one of the greatest players in the history of baseball, ends his Major League playing career after 22 seasons, 10 World Series and home runs.
The following year, Ruth, a larger-than-life figure whose name became synonymous with baseball, was one of Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. President Grover Cleveland becomes the first sitting president to marry in the White House on June 2, Cleveland entered the White House as a bachelor and left a married man and father of two.
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