Did Taxi Driver inspire a would-be assassin?
It’shard to stop a lone lunatic with a gun.
That is what the American Secret Service learned when President Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest outside a hotel in Washington DC.
He had just finished addressing a meeting at the Washington Hilton and was walking to his Limousine when six shots were fired – three hitting the president.
White House press secretary James Brady was shot in the head and critically wounded, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy was hit in the side and DC policeman Thomas Delahaney in the neck.
The shots were fired by a deranged drifter named John Hinckley Jr.
Reagan, apparently unaware he had been shot, was bundled into the vehicle by another Secret Service agent before being rushed to hospital.
The president was shot in the left lung, the .22 calibre bullet just missing his heart.
In an impressive feat for a 70-year-old man with a collapsed lung, he had walked into George Washington University Hospital under his own power.
As Reagan was treated and prepared for two hours in surgery, he was in good spirits and quipped to his wife, Nancy: “Honey, I forgot to duck.”
The next day, the president resumed some of his executive duties and even signed a piece of legislation from his hospital bed. On April 11, he returned to the White House.
Reagan’s popularity soared after the assassination attempt and at the end of April he was given a hero’s welcome by Congress.
In August, this same Congress passed his controversial economic programme, with several Democrats breaking ranks to back Reagan’s plan.
The president claimed to be fully recovered from the assassination attempt but in private he would continue to feel the effects of the gunshot wound for years.
Of the other victims, McCarthy and Delahaney eventually recovered but Brady, who nearly died after being shot through the eye, suffered permanent brain damage.
Hinckley, 25, was charged with attempting to assassinate the president but he was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
During the trial, Hinckley’s defence attorneys argued their client was suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, citing medical evidence and that he had a pathological obsession with Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver.
In the movie, Robert De Niro’s character, disturbed loner Travis Bickle, attempts to assassinate a fictional senator.
The lawyers claimed Hinckley saw the movie more than a dozen times, was obsessed with the lead actress Jodie Foster and had attempted to re-enact scenes.