Timothy Mcveigh's Attack On Oklahoma City

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The most devastating domestic attack on United States soil prior to September 11, 2001 took place on April 19, 1995 at exactly 9:02 am when the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was blown up. The explosion was made by a homemade bomb placed inside of a rented truck next to the north wall of the building, this happened to be right next to the building’s daycare. One hundred and sixty eight innocent people were killed in this explosion, nineteen of them being young and harmless children. Six hundred more people were injured in the heinous act. People in the mile radius of where the explosion took place explained how the explosion was like being in an earthquake shaking and destroying some 300 buildings in the vicinity of …show more content…
He was born in Pendleton, New York on April 23, 1968. In his teenage years his parents divorced ,and he went to lived with his father. His father introduced him to guns and a book by William Pierce known as The Turner Diaries (Biography.com Editors). Being introduced to violence in his childhood the ideas of hurting mass groups of people and the consequences that follow were desensitised to him. The Turner Diaries greatly influenced McVeigh and inspired him to commit his violent act of terrorism. When convicted of his crime McVeigh had pages of the novel in the front seat of his car, and the events of the Oklahoma City bombing were similar to that of what happened in the novel. “McVeigh had used an ammonium nitrate fertilizer bomb in a truck much like that described in the book [and] the time of the Oklahoma bombing was 9:02 am, just 13 minutes earlier than the time of the FBI bombing in the novel” (Egan). Influence from this novel obviously influenced his decisions in targeting the Alfred P. Murrah building and greatly affected how he thought. Timothy McVeigh was also soldier in the United States Army who he served in the Persian Gulf War and was discharged in the fall of 1991 (History.com Staff). Being a soldier could have helped McVeigh in killing so many innocent people because he was used to …show more content…
The bombing was completely uncalled for and no one expected it to happen. Everyone woke up thinking that April 19th was going to be a normal day just like every other one. Sadly though at exactly 9:02 am tragic devastation broke out at the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City. Many people had no idea what was going on and the original thought was that the force was a gas explosion. Special Agent JIm Norman recalled hearing and feeling the shock of the explosion and thinking that it was a bomb. He even stated “I never thought it was a gas explosion” (“The Oklahoma City Bombing 20 Years Later”). The accounts and stories of the horrific site of the explosion were grotesque. People rushed to the scene to do anything that they could to help the hundreds of people affected by the explosion. When people walked up onto the scene they saw nothing but destruction and death and blood. Brett Brooks wrote on how he thought “It looked like a war zone”. He remembered seeing bodies everywhere and how hospital walls were smeared with blood and how the smell was that of nothing but blood (Brooks 48). The devastation that people witnessed was that of great proportion, unlike that of what people had seen before. When people came onto the scene to help they saw death and injuries everywhere. Heather Taylor, a college student at the time, arrived on scene with Dr. Carl Spengler.
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