Officer J.D. Tippit
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On November 22, 1963, at this intersection, Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit was murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald, 45 minutes after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dealey Plaza. After the assassination, Oswald fled to his rooming house in Oak Cliff, in a neighborhood where Officer Tippit was assigned. While on patrol and traveling east on 10th St., having just crossed Patton St., Tippit stopped Oswald, who was walking on the sidewalk. After a brief conversation with him though the passenger window, Tippit exited his police car, at which time Oswald fired three shots across the hood, striking Tippit as he pulled his gun. Oswald then came around the rear of the car and fired a fourth shot. Oswald left the area. Temple Bowley, a citizen, stopped and used Tippit's radio to call for help. Officer Tippit was taken to Methodist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Oswald appeared at Hardy's Shoe Store shortly after manager Johnny C. Brewer heard a radio broadcast that a police officer had been shot and killed nearby. Brewer followed Oswald to the Texas Theater, where employee Julia Postal called police due to Brewer's suspicion. There, Oswald attempted to shoot arresting officer M.N. McDonald. Tippit, who left behind a wife and three children, is buried at Laurel Land Memorial Park. In 1964, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Valor from the National Police Hall of Fame, the Police Medal of Honor, the Police Cross, and the Citizens Traffic Commission Award of Heroism. Although the intersection of 10th and Patton streets has changed, Officer Tippit's actions and subsquent murder at this site are remembered for setting into motion a series of events that led directly to Oswald's arrest. (2012)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On November 22, 1963, less than an hour after President Kennedy was assassinated at Dealey Plaza, Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit stopped a man walking through his Oak Cliff patrol area and was shot dead at this intersection by Lee Harvey Oswald. A citizen used Tippit's own radio to call for help, and the manhunt that followed led witnesses to trail Oswald into the nearby Texas Theatre, where he was arrested. Tippit, who left a wife and three children, was posthumously honored for valor and is remembered for the events his death set in motion.
Why it matters
Officer Tippit's murder is a pivotal thread in the story of the Kennedy assassination, the moment that led directly to Oswald's capture and became part of one of the most scrutinized days in American history.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the fall of 1963, Dallas was a booming, fast-growing Sun Belt city, proud of its skyline and its oil-and-banking money but also politically charged. President John F. Kennedy came to Texas that November on a fence-mending trip, and his motorcade through downtown Dallas on the 22nd drew big, friendly crowds.
Oak Cliff, just southwest of downtown across the Trinity River, was then a settled residential district of modest homes, rooming houses, and neighborhood shops. It was ordinary working Dallas — the kind of place where a patrol officer knew his beat and the people on it.
That ordinariness is exactly what makes this corner haunting. The events remembered here unfolded not on a grand civic stage but on a residential street, in the space of a few minutes, in a neighborhood where nothing was supposed to happen.
People & events
J.D. Tippit was a Dallas patrolman assigned to the Oak Cliff area. Less than an hour after the shots in Dealey Plaza, he was on patrol when he stopped a man walking along the sidewalk — Lee Harvey Oswald, who had fled to his rooming house nearby. What began as a brief exchange through the passenger window ended in gunfire: as Tippit stepped from his car, he was shot and killed.
What happened next shows a neighborhood reacting in real time. A passing citizen, Temple Bowley, stopped and used the officer's own radio to call for help. Not far away, a shoe-store manager named Johnny Brewer grew suspicious of a man ducking into his doorway and followed him to the Texas Theatre, where an employee, Julia Postal, phoned the police. The arrest that followed, during which Oswald struggled with the officers closing in, put him in custody.
Tippit left behind a wife and three children. In the year after his death he was honored repeatedly for valor, and he was laid to rest at a Dallas memorial park. The marker remembers not a bystander but a working officer whose stop, and whose killing, cracked the case wide open.
Its place in the American story
November 22, 1963, is one of the most examined days in American history, and this quiet intersection is one of its essential chapters. The assassination of a president is the event the world remembers; the killing of a patrolman a few miles away is the thread that led to a suspect in custody within hours.
It is a reminder that history's largest moments are often broken open by ordinary people doing ordinary jobs — a policeman on his beat, a citizen who grabbed a radio, a shopkeeper who trusted his instincts. Their small, immediate choices shaped an investigation that would be scrutinized for generations.
The marker also honors a truth easy to lose in the enormity of the day: a family lost a husband and father. National tragedy and private grief happened on the same afternoon, blocks apart.
If you visit
Stand at 10th and Patton and the first thing you'll notice is how unremarkable it is — a residential Oak Cliff corner, not a monument plaza. That plainness is the point. Read the marker slowly and let the timeline settle over the everyday street around you.
The intersection has changed over the decades, so don't expect the 1963 streetscape; look instead at the geometry the inscription describes — the sidewalk, the crossing, the space where a patrol car would have pulled alongside. It helps you picture how quickly a routine stop turned.
This corner pairs naturally with the larger Kennedy sites a short drive north in downtown Dallas, and it makes a sobering, human counterpoint to them. Give it a few unhurried minutes; it rewards quiet attention more than a quick photo.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · J.D. Tippit
- · Lee Harvey Oswald
Related events
- · Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
Themes & tags
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