John Hinckley Jr., the man who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton in 1981, has weighed in on Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which took place at the same hotel.
Speaking to TMZ, Hinckley said the recent shooting attempt was “spooky” because it occurred at the same venue where he carried out his 1981 attack.
Hinckley stated that the Washington Hilton “is not secure” and urged the hotel to stop hosting major high-profile events “because bad things keep happening there.”
TMZ reports:
Hinckley kicked off our convo by telling us he first learned about the WHCD shooting when a newsflash came up on his phone and he turned on the TV to watch some of the coverage. He said it was “spooky” to find out the WHCD shooting “took place at the same hotel as mine did.”
Hinckley is now calling on the hotel to stop holding events there “because bad things keep happening” and “it’s just not a secure place to hold big events.”
To illustrate his point, Hinckley described what happened back in ’81 when he showed up at the hotel to shoot Reagan. He said back then, the security was “lax” too … because he was able to sneak into a crowd of reporters waiting outside the hotel for Reagan to exit after delivering a speech. He said Secret Service agents never checked whether he was a reporter during their sweeps.
If they had, Hinckley said he would have bolted because he was not a journalist, had no press credentials and his devious plot would have likely been exposed. As a result, history might have turned out very differently.
Hinckley had carried out the 1981 shooting that wounded Reagan and three others in an attempt to impress actress Jodi Foster.
Hellbound and Down 