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Dramatic Assassination Plots from History and Their Outcomes

Khalid Elhassan October 29, 2020 34 min

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - Austria-Hungary — The arrest of Gavrilo Princip after his shooting of Franz Ferdinand and his wife. BBC

31. Would-be Assassin Brought Down by a Dying Man

After mortally wounding officer Leslie Coffelt, Torresola shot another officer, Joseph Downs, in the hip, back, and neck. Despite his injuries, Downs managed to lock the door, denying the attackers entry into the Blair House. Torresola then joined Collazo in his firefight, and shot officer Donald Birdzell in the knee. As the gunfight raged, President Truman stuck his head out of a window, just 30 feet away, to see what was going on.

The front of Blair House, site of the assassination attempt. Ghosts of DC

As Secret Service agents shouted at the president to get away from the window, officer Leslie Coffelt, who had been shot by Torresola and lay dying, managed to prop himself against the guard booth. Taking aim, he fired on Torresola from 30 feet away, and shot him in the head, killing him instantly. Coffelt was rushed to the hospital, but died of his wounds four hours later. Oscar Collazo survived his injuries to be tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Truman commuted his sentence to life in prison.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.