Marnell “Marty” J. Goodman of Swampscott, Massachusetts, was shot by a truck driver who had been pelted with snowballs and yanked from his truck by students on Cumberland Avenue on February 1, 1965. Walter D. Willett Jr. of Greeneville was charged with second-degree murder following the shooting. Goodman, the nephew of English Professor Fred Blumberg, was a student in Liberal Arts (now Arts and Sciences) who participated in intramurals and was a member of the ROTC drill team. Around two hundred students had congregated in the 1600 block of Cumberland Avenue and were throwing snowballs at passing traffic. The death of a Knoxville man who suffered a heart attack while students were throwing snowballs at his car was also blamed on the near-riot by his widow.
A third person, Walter Lee Yow, called police, claiming to be a witness to the UT shooting and saying that he had been struck in the head by a snowball. He died at the Church Avenue Christenberry Clinic of a skull fracture after telling his story for the second time. No one recalled seeing him at the scene, and he appeared in none of the photographs taken. The Student Government Association organized a drive to pay the burial expenses of Yow, until the local newspapers revealed that he had a six-state police record and that police records showed that Yow’s story was mostly fabricated.