Bizarre story of John Hinckley Jr., Ronald Reagan’s shooter, makes him an outcast

Bizarre story of John Hinckley Jr., Ronald Reagan’s shooter, makes him an outcast

Hinckley attempted to assassinated Reagan back in 1981 to impress actress Jodie Foster, who had become obsessed with, and was found not guilty by reason of insanity, paving the way for his eventual release.

The last man to shoot a sitting American president is a free man most of the year — and his current home in Williamsburg, Va., is a place where he finds rejection and indifference among the locals.

John Hinckley Jr. shot Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981, just 69 days after his presidency began at the Washington Hilton Hotel. Hinckley was 25 at the time, and jurors found him not guilty by reason of insanity, opening up the possibility of again returning to public life.

For the past year, Hinckley has spent 17 days per month at his mother’s home, which is in the small colonial Virginia town of Williamsburg, according to an Associated Press report.

He’s not completely free: he has to meet regularly while in town with a psychiatrist and a therapist, and get a volunteer job, all in an attempt to reintegrate him with society as he nears his 60th birthday.

He’ll be facing court hearings soon on whether his time in Williamsburg should be extended, and he could end up living their permanently.

While people who are found not guilty by reason of insanity often return to society, Hinckley is a strange case in that it involved an attempted assassination of a sitting president. And it’s resulted in an atmosphere of indifference and oftentimes rejection in his new home.

One local, a musician named Cabot Wade who once gave Hinckley guitar lessons, said he never felt that Hinckley was dangerous, but he’s found that many in the community wouldn’t “touch him with a 10-foot pole,” according to the report.

Hinckley’s doctors say that he is largely free of the mental illness that prompted him to shoot Reagan. He had apparently done so to impress actress Jodie Foster, who he became obsessed with after watching the movie “Taxi Dirver.”

The attack injured Press Secretary James Brady, who became partially paralyzed. The incident caused Brady to launch a national campaign to fight the spread of guns in the United States.

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