"On a pleasant evening in September of 1969, twenty-six year-old Johnny Thomas excused himself from his family's dinner table, picked up a pump shotgun and announced he was going hunting -- alone. Then he stepped out of his house and shot sixteen-year-old Aljewel Wesley in the face as she sat on her own front porch. It was the first shot fired in what would become the biggest, wildest and most bizarre gunbattle in the 130 year history of the Dallas Police Department. This book is the story of that battle as seen by the officers who fought it"--P. [4] of cover.