50 years later, San Jose man remembers responding to assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

Tuesday marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

A San Jose man who is a former Los Angeles Police officer responded to the scene that historic night and helped in the arrest of the assassin.

Seventy-one-year-old Daniel Jensen looked at black-and-white images online that he had never seen Tuesday, reminding him of where he was exactly 50 years ago.

"It looks like my tie is next to the body. I didn't see him at the scene. The first time I saw him was when they were loading him into the ambulance with Mrs. Kennedy," said Jensen. 

The family law and criminal attorney was 21-years-old and one year into his job with LAPD.

He was working the night of June 5, 1968 when Senator Kennedy was assassinated.
   
Kennedy had just won the California Democratic Primary for President. 

Right after his acceptance speech, Sirhan Sirhan shot the candidate as he walked through the hotel's kitchen.

"A radio call came out, 'Shots fired at the Ambassador Hotel. No units available. Can someone take the call?' " said Jensen. 

He remembers taking the call with his partner and running into the hotel's kitchen.

"Two officers were trying to handcuff Sirhan Sirhan. We jumped in," said Jensen. "It was a crowded area. A lot of screaming going on." 

Jensen says he escorted Sirhan Sirhan to a waiting patrol car and then escorted Senator Kennedy in an ambulance to the hospital.

"Myself and an officer I had never worked with before out of Central Division were door guards. And we were only allowed two people (inside the emergency room.) Ethel got to come in. Mrs. Kennedy got to come in and a priest gave him last rites at that hospital," said Jensen. 

 For the three years that followed, Jensen was under a gag order and not allowed to speak a word about that night.

Fifty years later, he is struck by one thing about Senator Kennedy that night.

"I just remember how athletic he looked....because I saw him with his clothes all cut off," said Jensen.

A few weeks before the assassination in March of 1968, Robert Kennedy gave a campaign speech at St. James Park in San Jose.

To this day, a plaque in his name remains. It's faded and hard to read but it  a George Bernard Shaw quote Kennedy liked to say and the same one his brother Teddy paraphrased at Robert Kennedy's funeral.

"Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream of things that never were and say why not."