COEUR d'ALENE - If not for the smell of cheeseburgers, Mike Kincaid would have witnessed the assassination of a U.S. president.

The Hayden resident was 13 years old when he and two of his classmates were selected from their junior high school to attend a parade in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Kincaid still remembers the crowds and climbing on a police vehicle to get a quick glimpse of President John F. Kennedy.

Kincaid and his classmates decided to walk toward Dealey Plaza to see if they could get another look at Kennedy. He quickly admits that it wasn't the president he was most interested in seeing - it was Kennedy's gorgeous wife, Jackie.

But the smell of cheeseburgers stopped the young teens in their tracks.

They heard the news of Kennedy's assassination on a radio inside the restaurant, and witnessed the chaos unfolding outside. They rushed into the street, leaving their meals half-eaten.

"I don't think anyone finished their lunch that day," Kincaid said.

They attempted to wade through a sea of screaming people toward the plaza but the path was blocked by police officers. Kincaid said it was a traumatic experience, and one he will never forget.

His two classmates were chosen to go to the parade because they were star students. Kincaid had been selected for another reason - his principal thought it would soften the blow of an earlier tragedy the boy had seen.

Kincaid was the only witness of a school shooting that left one of his classmates dead on the first day of eighth grade.

"This kid grabs his chest and falls straight back, and I was thinking it was like a cowboy movie because he fell back so perfectly," Kincaid said. "I went over to him and looked at the kid holding a gun and I thought it was a blank gun. But then I saw the purple blood coming out of the kid's chest who got shot. He died and I was the eyewitness. The kid's friends didn't want me to testify against him and they bullied me and pushed me into the grinder in shop class. I still have the scar on my hand."

The two traumatic events left Kincaid fascinated with the legal system. He developed a deep desire to unravel the events leading to Lee Harvey Oswald's shooting of the president.

"I'd hang out at the jail to try to see him (Oswald) being transported," Kincaid said. "Then I would go to Dealey Plaza every day and I took hundreds of pictures. I was trying to figure out how he made that shot because it was a fairly long shot. Even as a 13-year-old, it was intriguing. I wish I still had the photos."

Kincaid later became an Alaska State Trooper and pilot. He moved to Hayden and considers himself semi-retired because he still writes novels based on his experiences as a trooper and instructs seaplane pilots.

Every year in November, Kincaid said he, like many people, is asked the question of "where were you when Kennedy was shot?" When people find out he was there in Dallas, the first thing they ask about is the conspiracy theories that still linger around that day.

In response, Kincaid always tells them about an officer who used to work in Dallas and later worked with him in Alaska. The officer was working at the crime lab in Dallas on the day Kennedy was shot, and he was there when the autopsy was performed.

"In 2007 I got invited to be on a panel for the Mystery Writers Conference, which was held that year in Alaska, and on the panel with me was that officer," Kincaid said. "I asked him about being there that day and what he thought about it. He said 'Absolutely, positively one shooter.' To me, that resolved it after all those years of curiosity."