Success 2013: Dr Ronald Coy Jones, chief surgery resident at Parkland Memorial Hospital on November 22, 1963. He was one of the first doctors to see the president Kennedy and saw his neck wound before the tracheotomy was performed

 Dr. Ronald C. Jones was chief surgery resident at Parkland Memorial Hospital on November 22, 1963. He was having lunch when he received word that the president had been shot and was en route to the hospital. He and Dr. Malcolm Perry immediately ran to the emergency room, where they joined other physicians in the effort to resuscitate the president. Jones' continued involvement in the assassination includes a 1964 interview by the FBI and the Warren Commission, appearances in numerous books and documentaries about the death of President Kennedy and an interview by the Assassination Records Review Board in 1998. Since 1987, Jones has served as chief of surgery at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.
Dr. Ronald Jones was one of the first doctors to see the president at Parkland Hospital.
He saw the neck wound before the tracheotomy was performed.

He says that the wound in the throat is consistent with an exit wound of a very low velocity missile.

Arlen Specter asked Dr. Jones if he saw any wounds. Dr Jones responded he saw a small wound in the neck no greater than a quarter inch in diameter.


Mr. SPECTER - Did you observe any wounds?
Dr. JONES - As we saw him the first time, we noticed that he had a small wound at the midline of the neck, just above the superasternal notch, and this was probably no greater than a quarter of an inch in greatest diameter, and that he had a large wound in the right posterior side of the head.

Mr. SPECTER - Will you describe as precisely as you can the wound that you observed in the throat?


Dr. JONES - The wound in the throat was probably no larger than a quarter of an inch in diameter. There appeared to be no powder burn present, although this could have been masked by the amount of blood that was on the head and neck, although there was no obvious, amount of powder present. There appeared to be a very minimal amount of disruption of interruption of the surrounding skin. There appeared to be relatively smooth edges around the wound, and if this occurred as a result of a missile, you would have probably thought it was a missile of very low velocity and probably could have been compatible with a bone fragment of either--probably exiting from the neck, but it was a very small, smooth wound.

 Mr. SPECTER - In this report, Dr. Jones, you state the following, "Previously described severe skull and brain injury was noted as well as a small hole in anterior midline of the neck thought to be a bullet entrance wound. What led you to the thought that it was a bullet entrance wound, sir?

Dr. JONES - The hole was very small and relatively clean cut, as you would see in a bullet that is entering rather than exiting from a patient. If this were an exit wound, you would think that it exited at a very low velocity to produce no more damage than this had done, and if this were a missile of high velocity, you would expect more of an explosive type of exit wound, with more tissue destruction than this appeared to have on superficial examination.

Mr. SPECTER - Would it be consistent, then, with an exit wound, but of low velocity, as you put it?

Dr. JONES - Yes; of very low velocity to the point that you might think that this bullet barely made it through the soft tissues and just enough to drop out of the skin on the opposite side.