David Thibodeau is a student of the Seven Seals who survived the federal agents-Branch Davidians conflict in 1993. In Part 10, he describes his experiences on April 19, 1993, the day of the FBI tank and CS gas assault. The phone rang at 6:00 a.m. and Thibodeau picked up the phone, and put Steve Schneider on the phone to learn that the building would be gassed. Adults put on gas masks. Thibodeau helped put a gas mask on Serenity Sea Jones (almost 4), and he saw a tear roll down her cheek. Children and their mothers were put in the concrete structure (a former vault) to protect them from the gas. Thibodeau was in the chapel listening to the radio with other Branch Davidian men there. It was windy. They opened the chapel windows to let the gas out. He addresses surveillance device tapes that the FBI alleges record Branch Davidians discussing a fire. He can’t hear these conversations on the tapes, and even if they are there they were recorded at 6:00 a.m.; the fire started at 12:07 p.m. He watched a tank push in the building’s front doors into the foyer. Then the tank came into the hall. He tried to get down the hallway past the front door to the concrete structure, but he couldn’t get past the rubble. David Koresh said that a tank had severed the phone line to the negotiators; that was the last thing that he heard Koresh say. On the radio, he heard the FBI say that the Branch Davidians were shooting at the FBI agents. Thibodeau did not see anyone shooting. He concluded that the FBI agents were setting up the American public for a massacre. That is when he lost all hope they would get out alive.

This interview was recorded at Mount Carmel Center.

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