Assassination!: The Brick Chronicle of Attempts on the Lives of Twelve US Presidents (32 page)

During this time, Hinckley wrote poems such as “Guns are Fun!”: See that living legend over there? / With one little squeeze of this trigger / I can put that person at my feet / moaning and groaning and pleading with God / This gun gives me pornographic power / If I wish, the president will fall / and the world will look at me in disbelief / all because I own an inexpensive gun / Guns are lovable, Guns are fun / Are you lucky enough to own one?

With Lennon’s death, Hinckley now felt he had only Jodie Foster to live for. When his father finally put his foot down in early March 1981, and refused to continue financially supporting his wayward twenty-five-year-old son, Hinckley took a bus to Washington, DC. On March 30, while eating breakfast at McDonald’s and reading a newspaper, he noticed the newly inaugurated president’s daily schedule.

Returning to his hotel room, Hinckley wrote a final letter to Foster, in which he acknowledged that he might be killed while trying to assassinate Reagan, but that he could not wait any longer to do something to impress her. He then sorted through his ammunition and loaded six Devastator hollow point bullets into his .22 caliber revolver, tucked it into his jacket pocket, went outside, and hailed a cab.

Hinckley saw President Reagan enter the Hilton Hotel at 1:45 PM, and bided his time in the lobby while the president made his speech to AFL-CIO leaders. Then, jostling for a position with TV crews just outside the side entrance, Hinckley staked out a spot by the security rope.

Reagan and his entourage emerged from the Hilton at 2:25 PM. The smiling president waved toward onlookers across the street as he headed for his waiting limousine about twenty feet away, then turned to wave toward the press on his left.

With about fifteen feet separating him from the president, Hinckley took his revolver out of his pocket, steadied the gun with both hands, and fired six times in two seconds, tracking his target’s movement from right to left.

At the sound of gunfire, Secret Service Agent Jerry Parr forced the president down behind the limousine’s door just in time for its bulletproof glass to stop a bullet from hitting the president’s head. While moving to shield the president, Agent Tim McCarthy took a bullet in the stomach. Washington, DC, police officer Tom Delahanty was struck in the neck, and Press Secretary James Brady collapsed after being shot in the head.

A senior citizen standing behind Hinckley slammed his arms down on the assassin’s neck, shouting, “Kill the son of a bitch!” In seconds, numerous police officers and Secret Service agents had piled on top of the shooter as McCarthy, Delahanty, and Brady lay on the sidewalk, bleeding from their wounds.

Pushed hard into the backseat of the limousine, Reagan felt a pain in his side, as if someone had hit him with a hammer. Thinking it was the result of agent Parr’s rough handling of him, the seventy-year-old president half-jokingly scolded him, “You son of a bitch, you broke my rib!”

But when Parr noticed the corner of Reagan’s mouth frothy with blood, he knew something was very wrong. He ordered the limousine to drive to George Washington University Hospital. Arriving ten minutes later, the president was not put on a stretcher but rather walked inside with Parr’s help before collapsing inside the door, saying, “I can’t breathe.”

Doctors discovered an entry wound just below the president’s left armpit. Reagan had been hit by Hinckley’s sixth and final bullet, which flattened as it ricocheted off the side of the limousine and lodged an inch from his heart. Just before being put under for surgery, the president said to his team of surgeons, “Please, tell me you’re Republicans.”