Lives of 3 Wounded in Reagan Shooting Take Different Turns

The pop, pop, pop of gunfire outside a Washington hotel 20 years ago sent the lives of those at the scene ricocheting in different directions.

Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, who took a bullet meant for President Reagan, is a police chief in a Chicago suburb. His heroism that day, March 30, 1981, underpinned a campaign for statewide political office a few years ago.

Washington police officer Thomas Delahanty, who was doing crowd control that day, was shot in the back of the neck and sent into immediate retirement at age 45, with enduring pain.

White House Press Secretary James S. Brady, shot in the head and permanently disabled, carries on his fight for gun control. He appeared in Washington this week to criticize, yet again, the gun lobby.

And Reagan, who has Alzheimer’s disease and broke his right hip in a fall at his California home in January, reached his 90th birthday on Feb. 6, a benchmark many people never attain.

“He is up and walking and has been since his birthday,” Reagan spokeswoman Joanne Drake said Friday, the 20th anniversary of the shooting. “As for the Alzheimer’s, he’s doing as well as can be expected for a disease that’s progressive.”

Reagan was walking out a side door of the Washington Hilton when John W. Hinckley Jr., a mentally disturbed young man trying to impress actress Jodie Foster, crouched and began firing a .22-caliber revolver.

He’d bought it for $29 at Rocky’s Pawn Shop in Dallas five months earlier.

The first shot hit Brady, who was walking beside the president. The bullet entered the left side of his forehead and passed through the right side of his brain.

His speech remains slurred.

“While anniversaries usually are happy occasions to remember, today is one anniversary I wish I could forget,” he said.

The bullet that hit Reagan below his left armpit had ricocheted off the car.

Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He’s still confined at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington.