Mr. Curry. Well, where he would be brought out of the jail office to put him in this car, would be, I would say, 16 or 20 feet, and then this building, this ramp runs from one street to the other, and the parking area would cover a block wide and perhaps 150 feet deep.
Mr. Rankin. Were there cars in the parking area?
Mr. Curry. Some cars were there. They had been searched out, all of them. All of the vehicles had been searched, and all the, where the airconditioning ducts were, they had all been searched, every place where a person could conceal himself had been searched out.
Mr. Rankin. Was there a plan for an armored car?
Mr. Curry. Yes, sir; there was.
Mr. Rankin. What happened about that?
Mr. Curry. After they had gotten the armored car down there, in talking with Captain Fritz, and here again this prisoner was his responsibility and I don't want to be in a position of just overriding him, and I was willing to trust his judgment, he had been doing this for, like I say, nearly 40 years, and he said, "Chief, I would prefer not to use that armored car, I don't know who the driver is. It is awkward to handle and if anybody tries to do anything to us, I am afraid we would be surrounded. I would prefer to put him in a police car with some of my men following him, and get in and just take him right down Main Street and slip him into the jail."
So I said, "It will be all right with me if you want to do it that way but let's not say anything about this."
Mr. Rankin. Now the armored car was not a Dallas police car, was it?
Mr. Curry. No; it was not.