The Warren Commission (WC) and the FBI tried to ignore the wounding of James Tague. Tague was standing about 450 feet from the Texas School Book Depository during the shooting. A bullet or large fragment struck the curb on Main Street about 20 feet from where he was standing. Moments after the shooting, a police officer noticed that Tague was bleeding from his right cheek. Tague had either been struck by a piece of concrete that had been sent flying from the curb scar, or by a fragment from the missile that hit the curb, or by a fragment that struck him before it hit anything else.
The curb scar was deep enough that Tague assumed he could have been cut by a chip of concrete from it. He recalled that when the shooting started he had felt a sting on his cheek. Later, he described the mark on the curb as it appeared when he saw it:
There was a mark. Quite obviously, it was a bullet, and it was very fresh. (WCR, p. 116)Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers, who saw the mark soon after the shooting, agreed that it had been caused by a bullet. Patrolman Clyde Haygood, who radioed in the incident at around 12:40, said Tague might have been hit “by a ricochet from the bullet off the concrete” (WCR, p. 116). In a 1966 filmed interview, Tague unequivocally said the curb mark was the result of a bullet striking the curb.
WC apologists have been unable to provide a plausible, credible explanation for the Tague wounding.
Gerald Posner's theory to explain the Tague incident is the most fanciful of all the attempts to explain it. Posner theorizes that the scar on the curb was caused by a lead fragment from a bullet that allegedly struck a limb of the oak tree, in spite of the fact that
the tree whose limb the bullet supposedly hit was at least 400 feet from the curb. Additionally, according to Posner, this was the first shot, but Tague said it was the second shot that hit the curb and caused the wound on his face.
Moreover, Posner theorizes that the lead core separated from its copper jacketing after the alleged tree-branch collision and then traveled in a straight line to the curb, missing everything in between. However, after separating from the jacket and then flying over 400 feet, it is extremely doubtful the lead core would have been able to hit the curb with enough force to cause a concrete chip or metal fragment to reach Tague with enough speed to visibly cut his face, nor is it at all likely that such a lead fragment would have had enough force to fly straight to Tague's face and then cut it.
To make matters worse, Posner says the tree-branch-collision bullet also sent a sizable fragment downward, and that this fragment was the missile that five witnesses saw hit the pavement behind the limo early in the shooting.
Those who are familiar with FMJ bullet behavior will see other problems with Posner's theory, assuming for the sake of argument that the bullet was an FMJ bullet fired from the sixth-floor window. Ballistics tests show that an FMJ bullet fired from the sixth-floor window would have easily penetrated several inches into an oak limb and would not have had its jacket and core separated by the collision. Typically, an FMJ bullet will penetrate at least 2 inches into oak wood when fired from around 100 feet away (the oak tree was 60-100 feet from the sixth-floor window, depending on which limb one assumes was hit).
If the bullet merely grazed a tree limb, this certainly would not have caused the jacket to separate from the lead core, nor would it have caused the bullet to lose two sizable fragments.
The WC's theory to explain the Tague wounding is only slightly less implausible than Posner's fairy tale. The WC theorized that a fragment from the head shot hit the curb and/or wounded Tague's face -- never mind the fact that the fragment would have exited the righthand side of the skull, whereas Tague was standing to the left of the limo; and never mind the fact that the fragment would have had to clear the limo's windshield and roll bar and then dive downward while still retaining enough velocity to cause the required damage.
It is no wonder that WC staffers and the FBI did their level best to ignore the Tague wounding. Indeed, when the WC finally got around to asking the FBI to look into the matter, the Dallas FBI office replied that they could not find the curb scar, and suggested it had been wiped away by street cleaners!
The lone-gunman theory's inability to explain the Tague wounding is one of many proofs that it is implausible and untenable.
"The Wounding of James Tague Refutes the Lone-Gunman Theory of the JFK Assassination"
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QGE1Se8HuF99CToouKhKW0OSRprmspwX/view