United States: Assassinations and failed attempts

MEXICO CITY (apro).- Following the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump during a rally today in Butler, Pennsylvania, we count down some of the assassinations and attempted murders carried out in the United States; from Abraham Lincoln to John F. Kennedy.

Andrew Jackson

On January 30, 1835, Andrew Jackson became the first US president to be assassinated. Warren R. Davis, Richard Lawrence, a young unemployed house painter, approached him near the Capitol.

The perpetrator pointed a pistol at the president, but when he pulled the trigger it failed to fire, so he pulled out a second one he had with him, but no bullet came out. Historians attribute the failure of both weapons to the moisture in them. Warren was disarmed and imprisoned.

Abraham Lincoln

On April 14, 1865, actor Wilkes Booth took advantage of the fact that Abraham Lincoln was at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., where he was going to see the musical comedy ‘Our American Cousin’, to sneak into the president’s box. Lincoln, who was in the company of his wife, was fatally shot in the head with a Derringer pistol.

James A. Garfield

On July 2, 1881, Charles J. Guiteau, a lawyer who had not received the compensation he expected after believing he had played a major role in James A. Garfield’s victory in the United States presidential election, accosted the president-elect at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station and shot him twice.

None of the bullets damaged any vital organs, however, the unfortunate actions of the doctors in searching for the bullets caused Garfield’s death two months later.

William McKinley

On September 6, 1901, Leon Czolgosz fired a pistol at President William McKinley twice at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Doctors were unable to remove one of the bullets, and he died a few days later.

Theodore Roosevelt

Following McKinley’s death, Theodore Roosevelt took over and, like his predecessor, was also the target of an assassination attempt. On October 14, 1912, during a rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, John Schrank shot him in the heart as the US president waved from the presidential car, which had an open top.

Fortunately for Roosevelt, the bullet lodged in his chest after penetrating the steel case of his glasses and passing through a 50-page copy of a single-fold speech titled “The Death of a Soldier.” Despite the assassination attempt, Roosevelt continued with his agenda and after finishing, he went to the hospital.

X-rays showed the bullet lodged in his pectoral muscle, but it did not penetrate the pleura. Doctors concluded that it would be less dangerous to leave it in place than to try to remove it, and Roosevelt carried the bullet with him for the rest of his life.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

In February 1933, Giuseppe Zangara attempted to shoot President Delano Roosevelt during a rally in Miami, but an attendee at the event, Lillian Cross, hit the shooter’s arm with her handbag, causing him to miss. Unfortunately, the bullet found its way into Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who was standing next to the president, and he was killed.

John F. Kennedy

On November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, while John Fitzgerald Kennedy was traveling in the presidential automobile with his wife Jackie Kennedy, he was shot twice, one of which hit him in the back and exited through his throat, the second detonated in his head. The alleged shooter was Lee Harvey Oswald.

Gerald Ford

Gerald was the victim of two assassination attempts, but survived both. The first time was on September 5, 1975, when Lynette Fromme took a .45-caliber Colt automatic pistol and pointed it at Ford. Although the gun was loaded when she tried to fire it, no bullet was in the trigger. She was immediately arrested.

The second occasion was on September 22 of that same year. Sara Jane Moore was in the crowd that came to see the president at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco when she fired a single shot from a .38-caliber revolver, but missed. Moore had purchased the gun that morning and was unaware that the sights were 6 inches from the point of impact at that distance, which caused it to fail.

Ronald Reagan

On March 30, 1981, after leaving a conference at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., Reagan and three others were shot. The shooter was John Hinckley Jr. Reagan was not directly hit; only a ricocheted bullet left him with a superficial wound to the chest that did not pierce any tissue.