Attack
Torresola approached along Pennsylvania Avenue from the west side, while his partner, Oscar Collazo, walked up to Capitol police officer, Donald Birdzell, who was standing on the steps of the Blair House. From behind, Collazo shot at Birdzell, but had failed to chamber a round in it, and the gun did not fire. After fumbling with it, Collazo fired the weapon just as Birdzell was turning to face him, and shot the officer in his right knee.
While President Truman napped on the second floor, one of the attackers, Oscar Collazo, shot a White House police officer at the guard house and began walking up the front steps of Blair House. After hearing the gunshots, Secret Service agent Vincent Mroz ran through a basement corridor and stepped out of a street-level door on the east side of the House, where he opened fire on Collazo. Mroz stopped Collazo on the outside steps with a bullet to the chest. The incident has been described as "the biggest gunfight in Secret Service History." Two other officers took part in the shooting of the attackers.
Meanwhile, Torresola had approached a guard booth at the west corner and took White House police officer Leslie Coffelt by surprise, shooting at him four times from close range and mortally wounding him with a 9mm German Luger. Three of those shots struck Coffelt in the chest and abdomen, and the fourth went through his tunic.
Torresola shot police officer Joseph Downs in the hip, before he could draw his weapon. As Downs turned toward the house, Torresola shot him in the back and in the neck. Downs got into the basement and secured the door, denying Torresola entry into the Blair House.
Torresola turned his attention to the shoot-out between his partner Collazo and several other police officers. He shot officer Donald Birdzell in the left knee.
Birdzell could no longer stand and was effectively incapacitated (he would later recover).
Torresola stood to the left of the Blair House steps to reload. President Truman had awoken from a nap to the sound of gunfire and looked outside his second floor window. Torresola was thirty-one feet away from Truman's window.
At that same moment, Coffelt left the guard booth, propped against it, and fired his .38-caliber service revolver at Torresola, about 30 feet away. Coffelt hit Torresola two inches above the ear, killing him instantly. Taken to the hospital, Coffelt died four hours later.
The gunfight involving Torresola lasted approximately 20 seconds, while the gunfight with Collazo lasted approximately 38.5 seconds. Only one of Collazo's shots hit anyone. Torresola did most of the shooting.
Read more about this topic: Truman Assassination Attempt
Famous quotes containing the word attack:
“Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.”
—Sun Tzu (6th–5th century B.C.)
“When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“It is well worth the efforts of a lifetime to have attained knowledge which justifies an attack on the root of all evil—viz. the deadly atheism which asserts that because forms of evil have always existed in society, therefore they must always exist; and that the attainment of a high ideal is a hopeless chimera.”
—Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910)