Reagan assassination attempt

On March 30, 1981, an attempt was made to assassinate Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. While leaving a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., President Reagan and three others were shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. Hinckley's motivation for the attack was to impress actress Jodie Foster, over whom he had developed an obsession after seeing her in the 1976 film Taxi Driver.

There were no fatalities in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Reagan was shot in the chest, just below the left underarm. He suffered a punctured lung and heavy internal bleeding, but prompt medical attention allowed him to recover quickly. No formal invocation of presidential succession took place, although Secretary of State Alexander Haig controversially stated that he was "in control here" while Vice President George H. W. Bush returned to Washington.

The most seriously wounded victim was White House Press Secretary James Brady, who was left paralyzed from a gunshot wound to the head. He would later die in 2014 of causes a Virginia medical examiner found were directly related to the 1981 shooting. Hinckley also wounded Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy and Washington D.C. police officer Thomas Delahanty.

Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on charges of attempting to assassinate the President and remained confined to a psychiatric facility. On July 27, 2016 it was announced he would be released to live with his mother in Williamsburg, Virginia, no earlier than August 5; he was subsequently released on September 10. In January 2015, federal prosecutors announced that they would not charge Hinckley with Brady's death, despite the medical examiner's classification of his death as a homicide.