On March 30, 1981, @judywoodruffpbs was part of the press pool traveling with President Ronald Reagan. He had just delivered a speech at the Washington Hilton and was walking out of the hotel with his Secret Service detail.
“As he came out the door and began to wave to the group of supporters there, … suddenly I heard this ‘pop pop pop’ sound,” she recalled in an interview Sunday. “[It] sounded like firecrackers. But immediately people started yelling, ‘get down, get down!’ We got down, and we realized it was gunshots.”
The Secret Service pushed the president into his car and took off. Agents also tackled the shooter, John Hinckley Jr., but not before he wounded Reagan, White House Press Secretary James Brady, a D.C. police officer and a Secret Service agent.
More than 40 years after the attempted assassination of Reagan, a gunman shot at former President Donald Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
Judy looked back at her experiences reporting on both historic events.
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