The Killing of a US President

In English, the word ‘assassination’ refers to the deliberate killing of a prominent or influential individual, often driven by personal grievances or for political or religious motives. In the United States, the assassination of president John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963 in Dallas stands out as a defining moment in 20th-century history of that country and a seemingly never-ending source of conspiracy theories.

A few hours after the shooting in Dallas, a former US marine named Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and accused. He never faced trial: two days later, he was point-blank shot during a prisoner transfer by Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner with alleged mafia connections. In 2016, Donald Trump implied that his Republican competitor Ted Cruz’s Cuban father Rafael was an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Three presidents assassinated in 36 years

Four other US presidents have also been assassinated. In 1865, just days after the American Civil War ended, US president Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathiser, shot Lincoln in the back of the head during a theatre performance in Washington, D.C..

In 1881, James A. Garfield, the 20th US president, met a similar fate. His killer, Charles J. Guiteau nursed resentment for the president as he was not appointed to a diplomatic post he thought he deserved. When he shot his revolver, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., one of his bullets glanced off Garfield’s arm and the other one pierced his back. Garfield died from his injuries months later. In 1901, President William McKinley was killed by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist driven by his desire to eliminate what he deemed to be oppressive government figures. Czolgosz shot McKinley twice in the abdomen during a public event in Buffalo, New York.

The survivors

Other US presidents have survived assassination attempts, including Andrew Jackson in 1835, Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, and Ronald Reagan, who survived an assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr. in March 1981, just a few months into Reagan’s first term. Hinckley’s alleged motive was to impress actor Jodie Foster. He fired six shots at the president, striking him and several others. Reagan was hit in the chest and suffered a punctured lung, but survived after undergoing surgery. He continued to serve as president for another eight years.

43 years later, another presidential assassination attempt has cast its shadow on the United States. On 13 July, former US president and now Republican Party's nominee Donald Trump was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania by a 20-year-old man named Thomas Matthew Crooks. Crooks was killed on site by a Secret Service Counter Assault Team sniper.