President Reagan was shot in the chest in an assassination attempt outside a Washington hotel on March 30, only 10 weeks after his inauguration.
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The shooting occurred when the President was leaving the hotel after addressing a trade union convention. As he approached the presidential limousine six shots were fired, wounding him, Mr James Brady (the White House press secretary), Mr Timothy McCarthy (a Secret Service agent) and Mr Thomas Delahanty (a member of the District of Columbia-Washington-police force). Mr Reagan was immediately driven to the George Washington University Hospital where he underwent a two-hour operation for the removal of a bullet from his left lung. Of the three other victims, Mr Brady was shot in the head, Mr McCarthy in the right side and Mr Delahanty in the neck.
The bullets, which had been fired from a.22 calibre revolver, were identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on April 2 as a type, known as Devastator, which were designed to explode on impact. The bullet which wounded the President was believed to have hit the side of the presidential limousine and ricocheted into Mr Reagan as he was being pulled into the car by a security agent.
The assassination attempt was recorded as it happened by a television camera crew which was filming the President as he left the convention hotel. From the picture sequences obtained by this crew it appeared that the assailant had fired his revolver at the President from within a group of press reporters who had been positioned close to the hotel exit.
Mr Reagan's assailant, who was immediately arrested, was later identified as Mr John Warnock Hinckley (25), of Evergreen (Colorado), the son of an oil company executive.
Having been charged with the attempted assassination of the President and with assaulting Mr McCarthy, Mr Hinckley was committed by a US district judge on April 2 to an institution for a mental examination to determine his sanity. Earlier the same day a federal magistrate had sent the case to a federal grand jury for a decision on whether Mr Hinckley should be indicted.
An unposted letter found in Mr Hinckley's hotel bedroom in Washington after the shooting indicated that an infatuation with Miss Jodie Foster (18), a film actress, might have motivated the attack on Mr Reagan.
The letter, published by The Washington Post on April 1, was dated March 30, 1981, with the time 12.45 p.m. inscribed at the top. The shooting of Mr Reagan occurred at about 2.30 p.m. on that day. The letter began: "Dear Jody, There is a definite possibility that I will be killed in my attempt to get Reagan. It is for this very reason that I am writing to you now."
In 1975 Miss Foster had played a child prostitute in a film, called Taxi Driver, in which the main character, a taxi driver, was planning to kill a presidential candidate before being scared off by a security agent.
Mr Reagan, who had returned to the White House on April 11, said in a television interview on April 22 that the assassination attempt still seemed "unreal", that the shooting caused him to have a "paralysing pain", and that he continued to suffer soreness from the wound in his chest.-(International Herald Tribune - Times - Daily Telegraph - Guardian)
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