Clint Hill rode the forward part of the left running board of the follow-up car. He testified that after the shots he jumped off, ran to the limousine and climbed on as it accelerated. By then a shot had removed part of the president’s head. “Mrs. Kennedy had jumped up from the seat and was, it appeared to me, reaching for something coming off the right rear bumper of the car, the right rear tail, when she noticed that I was trying to climb on the car. She turned toward me and I grabbed her and put her back in the back seat, crawled up on top of the back seat and lay there.” [1]

She testified on 5 June 1964 at her home on N Street in Washington, with Robert Kennedy present. She described her husband putting his hand to his forehead and falling into her lap. Then: “there were pictures later on of me climbing out the back. But I don’t remember that at all.” Asked if she remembered Hill coming to help, she said, “I don’t remember anything.” [2]

Nellie Connally, in the jump seat ahead, described the governor’s wounding and Mrs. Kennedy’s cries. [3]

Some claim that her movement shows she was fleeing a shot from the front, or that she was retrieving part of the skull blown backward. A common reading is that she was reaching for material from the head wound that had landed on the trunk. Hill’s words fit that reading but do not say it. [1]