Correspondents' Dinner Shooting Revives Memories of Another Presidential Assassination Attempt—at the Same Hotel

Connor GreeneTue, April 28, 2026 at 10:48 PM UTC

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President Ronald Reagan waving to crowd outside Hilton Hotel shortly before assassination attempt in Washington, D.C., on March 30, 1981. —Circa Images/GHI/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Forty-five years before the alleged assassination attempt against President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on Saturday night, a different President was shot at the same Washington, D.C., hotel.

Then-President Ronald Reagan was outside the Washington Hilton, the venue where the WHCA dinner is held each year, in 1981 when a man named John Hinckley Jr. made an attempt on his life.

While the suspect in Saturday’s shooting was apprehended before reaching the main ballroom where Trump, members of his Cabinet, and more than 2,000 other guests were seated, Hinckley got far closer to Reagan in his attack, firing a revolver at the President from just feet away and wounding him before he was ultimately subdued and arrested.

Hinckley, now 70, said that it was “spooky” to learn that Saturday’s shooting "took place at the same hotel as mine did" in an interview with TMZ published on Monday.

He’s not the only one to see echoes of his attack in the recent shooting, which has sparked renewed attention to that history. Here’s what to know about the 1981 assassination attempt.

What happened in 1981

On March 30, 1981, Reagan was leaving the Washington Hilton with a Secret Service detail after speaking to members of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. But before the President could reach his limousine where it was parked in front of the hotel, Hinckley, standing in a crowd of people waiting outside, opened fire.

The would-be assassin was tackled by a special agent within seconds, and Reagan was quickly pushed into the vehicle and driven away. But in that short window, Hinckley managed to get off six shots with his .22-caliber revolver—one of which, after ricocheting off Reagan’s limousine, hit the President under his left armpit, striking a rib, piercing a lung, and narrowly missing his heart.

Three others were also shot: White House Press Secretary James Brady in the head; Metropolitan Police Officer Thomas Delahanty in the back of the neck; and Special Agent Tim McCarthy, who stepped between Hinckley and the President, in the chest.

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All four survived the attack. In the limousine, Special Agent in Charge Jerry Parr saw that Reagan was bleeding from his mouth and directed the vehicle to George Washington University hospital, where doctors operated to remove the bullet. The President spent 12 days in the hospital before returning to the White House.

Brady, who suffered a serious head wound that left him partially paralyzed, died in 2014 due to injuries sustained during the shooting, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the Northern District of Virginia. His death was ruled a homicide.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) found evidence in Hinckley’s room at the Park Central Hotel that pointed to his motive: In a letter to the actress Jodie Foster, Hinckley had written that he was planning to kill Reagan as a demonstration of his love for her. The FBI also found magazine pictures of Foster in the room, along with pages of newspapers that detailed Reagan’s schedule.

On June 21, 1982, a jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity. He spent more than 30 years in a psychiatric institution before receiving full-time conditional release in 2016 to live with his mother in Virginia. He was fully released in June 2022.

“After 41 years 2 months and 15 days, FREEDOM AT LAST!!!” Hinckley wrote on X at the time.

Reagan's shooter and agent injured in the assassination attempt speak out

After the alleged attempt on Trump’s life, Hinckley said to TMZ that the Washington Hilton hotel should stop hosting large gatherings.

“Bad things keep happening” at the Hilton, Hinckley told the outlet, contending that it is “just not a secure place to hold big events.” He described the security at the hotel in 1981 as “lax.”

Meanwhile McCarthy, the special agent shot outside the Washington Hilton in the 1981 attack, praised the Secret Service response to the shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner, saying they did a “hell of a good job.”

“From what I can tell right now talking to my colleagues, it was handled pretty well. You never want something like this to happen. Security was tested, security responded, and at this point it did pretty well,” McCarthy said to NewsNation. “I’m pretty satisfied with what the Secret Service did on this occasion.”

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”