Image of Dallas Police officer M. N. "Nick" McDonald at Dallas Police Department

It is not clear which Dallas Morning News photographer took this image. Jack Beers, Tom Dillard and Bill Winfrey are the photographers who were present when the photograph was taken. It could have been any of them. - Stephanie Allen-Givens, Collections and Exhibits Manager

Dallas police officer M. "Nick" McDonald is speaking here with Jim Ewell (with cigarette and notepad), a police reporter at The Dallas Morning News. Ewell had been at Dallas Love Field that morning. Following the assassination, he was in Dealey Plaza, at the Tippit shooting scene and inside the Texas Theatre during Oswald's arrest. The scratch clearly visible on Officer McDonald's face occurred during the arrest of Oswald. McDonald was the first to confront Oswald inside the theater, and he later recalled that Oswald punched him in the face before aiming a gun at McDonald. Several officers quickly came to McDonald's aid, and a scuffle took place. As McDonald described in his 2003 oral history, after Oswald was subdued and handcuffed, McDonald noticed that he "was bloody all over." He recalled: "My lip was bloody. My nose was bloody. And this gash here--well, that gash was caused when I jerked the pistol away from him. The hammer scratched me about four inches down the face." Close-up photographs, often reprinted in assassination literature, showing McDonald's face were taken that afternoon at Dallas police headquarters to provide "photographic evidence that [Oswald] resisted arrest." Police officials were rightfully concerned since Oswald had immediately started shouting "police brutality" while being led out of the Texas Theatre, and he frequently bemoaned his treatment before the news media that weekend. -- Stephen Fagin, Curator