The Washington Hilton hotel, where a shooting occurred on the 25th with U.S. President Donald Trump and senior U.S. officials in attendance, is a place that left a deep scar on the U.S. Secret Service.
At 2:27 p.m. on Mar. 30, 1981, 69 days into his term, President Ronald Reagan was shot at this hotel. It happened as he was heading to his motorcade after finishing a speech to a construction union under the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). John Hinckley Jr., a 25-year-old who had blended into the crowd, pulled out a .22-caliber revolver and fired six shots in three seconds.
The first bullet lodged in the head of White House Spokesperson James Brady. The second struck Washington, D.C., police officer Thomas Delahanty in the neck, and the fourth pierced the abdomen of Secret Service (SS) agent Timothy McCarthy, who threw himself in front of Reagan.
The last, sixth bullet ricocheted off the presidential limousine and burrowed into Reagan's left armpit. The bullet broke a rib, pierced the left lung, and lodged about 2.5 centimeters from the heart. Taken to George Washington University Hospital, Reagan underwent emergency thoracotomy and returned to the White House 12 days later. Spokesperson Brady lived with paralysis for the rest of his life and died in 2014. The White House Secret Service used this incident to completely overhaul procedures for moving the president between vehicles and buildings.
Hinckley, who was caught as Reagan's shooter, was obsessively fixated on famous actor Jodie Foster from the movie "Taxi Driver." He believed that if he shot the president, he could win Foster's heart. Found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982 and committed to a psychiatric hospital, Hinckley returned to his mother's home in 2016 and was released from all court orders in June 2022. Right after President Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, Hinckley wrote on his social media, "Violence is not the answer."
Although there have now been two shooting incidents targeting presidents, the Washington Hilton is originally considered the safest event venue in Washington. After President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination, the hotel built a separate shielded passage known as the "President's Walk." As a large hotel in the world's political capital, Washington, the Secret Service (SS) also conducted at least 100 advance security sweeps at the hotel starting in the early 1970s. The fact that such a hotel became the stage for an attempted assassination of a U.S. president shocked the entire protection system.
At 8 p.m. on Apr. 25, 45 years later, screams rang out again in the same hotel ballroom. President Trump, attending the White House Correspondents' Dinner for the first time as a sitting president, was listening to a speech onstage when gunshots erupted in the hallway. This time, however, no one was hit.
Major outlets reported that Secret Service agents led President Trump and first lady Melania offstage immediately after the gunshots. Vice President JD Vance; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; and FBI Director Kashi Patel, among other key administration officials, were evacuated together. Journalists at the dinner said an armed suspect was detected at the security checkpoint before entering the venue and then opened fire.
Still, the very fact that gunshots were fired at an event where the president, vice president, the defense and state secretaries, and the FBI director were seated in the same space is expected to leave a significant shock among Washington's power circles. Observers said that if a shooter had entered the banquet hall, a substantial number of officials from first to fifth in the presidential line of succession could have been exposed to simultaneous danger.