John Hinkley Jr.'s mugshot. Photo via Wikipedia
John Hinckley Jr., the man who shot President Reagan in an attempted assassination, will be released from the psychiatric facility he's been living in for the past 35 years, the Washington Post reports. A judge ruled that he will be allowed to live with his elderly mother in Williamsburg, Virginia, as soon as next week.Hinckley, now 61, shot Reagan outside the Washington Hilton on March 30, 1981. The attack left Reagan and his press secretary, James Brady, wounded, the latter permanently disabled after suffering severe brain damage from an exploding bullet fired from Hinckley's .22-caliber revolver.At trial, the would-be assassin was found not guilty by reason of insanity and ordered to live at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, DC. But since 2013, Hinckley has been allowed extended visits to his mother's Virginia home, often spending as many as 17 days a month there.Last year more than 100 pages of court documents—consisting mainly of transcripts between Hinckley and his therapists—were released and showed that doctors at St. Elizabeth believed he was ready to live at home full-time. Hinckley, according to the documents, expressed tremendous remorse for his actions in 1981, and felt especially guilty for what he'd done to Brady, whose eventual death in 2014 shook him. "I so diminished his life," he said, transcripts show.The documents also exposed the normalcy of Hinckley's modern life at St. Elizabeth and with his mother. He shopped for himself at Target and JC Penny, volunteered at a local mental hospital, made the required visits with therapists, and would often treat his mother to meals at Ruby Tuesday. He even applied for jobs at Subway and Starbucks.As such, US District Court Judge Paul Friedman has ruled that Hinckley poses no threat to the public and can live with his mother full-time starting as early as August 5. But no word yet how Jodie Foster feels about all this.Read: What Ronald Reagan Teaches Us About Donald Trump
Advertisement