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Violence Against US Politicians and Diplomats Fast Facts

By CNN

(CNN) — Here is a look at violence against US politicians and diplomats throughout history.

Presidents

January 30, 1835 – President Andrew Jackson is shot at by Richard Lawrence as he attends a congressional funeral in the Capitol in Washington. Lawrence fires twice, but the bullets do not discharge.

April 14, 1865 – President Abraham Lincoln is shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth during a performance at Ford’s Theatre in Washington.

July 2, 1881 – President James Garfield is shot by Charles Guiteau as he is about to board a train at the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington. President Garfield is severely wounded and dies on September 19.

September 6, 1901 – After delivering a speech at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, President William McKinley is shot in the stomach by Leon Czolgosz. McKinley dies of his wound on September 14.

October 14, 1912 – Former President Theodore Roosevelt, while campaigning as a candidate of the Progressive Party, is shot and wounded by John Schrank while on his way to a campaign appearance in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

February 15, 1933 – President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt is shot at by Joseph Zangara while sitting in his open air car after addressing supporters in Miami, Florida. Roosevelt is not harmed.

November 1, 1950 – Two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, try to shoot their way into Blair House, where President Harry Truman is staying while the White House is renovated. The gunmen never reach the interior of Blair House and Truman is not harmed.

November 22, 1963 – President John F. Kennedy is shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald while traveling by an open car motorcade through Dallas, Texas.

September 5, 1975 – Charles Manson follower Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme attempts to shoot President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California. Secret Service agents grab her and the gun, and Ford is unhurt.

September 22, 1975 – Sara Jane Moore, a woman with ties to left wing radical groups, attempts to shoot President Ford in San Francisco.

March 30, 1981 – President Ronald Reagan is shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. as he leaves the Hilton Hotel in Washington after delivering a speech to the Construction Trades Council.

July 13, 2024 – Former President Donald Trump is injured in a shooting by Thomas Matthew Crooks during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in what the FBI says is an assassination attempt. One rally attendee is killed and two others are seriously injured. The FBI identifies Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, as the gunman.

September 15, 2024 – Trump is playing golf at his club in West Palm Beach, Florida, when a Secret Service agent spots a man with a rifle along the perimeter of the golf course. Ryan Routh, flees but is later detained.

Congressmen and Senators (selected)

October 22, 1868 – Rep. James Hinds (R-AR) is shot and killed by Ku Klux Klan member George Clark while traveling on horseback to a speaking engagement near Indian Bay, Arkansas.

April 24, 1905 – Rep. John Pinckney (D-TX) is shot and killed at a Waller County Prohibition League rally in Hempstead, Texas.

September 8, 1935 – Sen. Huey Long (D-LA) is shot in the State Capitol in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Long dies two days later from the wound to his abdomen.

March 1, 1954 – Rep. Alvin M. Bentley (R-MI), Rep. Clifford Davis (D-TN), Rep. Ben F. Jensen (R-IA), Rep. George Hyde Fallon (D-MD), and Rep. Kenneth A. Roberts (D-AL) are wounded when four Puerto Rican nationalists enter the US Capitol and open fire from an upstairs spectators’ gallery onto the House floor.

June 5, 1968 – Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) is shot by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, following his victory speech after the California Democratic presidential primary. Kennedy dies the next day.

November 18, 1978 – Rep. Leo Ryan (D-CA) is shot and killed at an airstrip in Guyana after investigating the activities of the People’s Temple led by Rev. Jim Jones.

January 8, 2011 – Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) is shot and wounded by Jared Lee Loughner at a political event outside a Safeway supermarket in Tucson, Arizona. Six people are killed.

June 14, 2017 – Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), the House majority whip, is shot in Alexandria, Virginia, during a Republicans’ baseball team practice. Two others on the congressional team, and two Capitol police officers are also shot. The gunman James Hodgkinson is killed by authorities.

June 7, 2025 – Two Minnesota state Democratic lawmakers and their spouses are shot in their homes. Vance Boelter faces both federal and state charges in connection with the killings of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. Boelter is also accused of shooting Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, who both survived the attack. On July 23, 2026, Boelter is sentenced to two life terms plus 40 years after pleading guilty to the murder of Hortman and her husband.

Governors and Mayors (selected)

February 15, 1933 – Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak is killed in Miami, with a bullet meant for President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. He dies on March 6.

May 15, 1972 – Alabama Governor George Wallace is shot by Arthur Bremer while campaigning for president in Laurel, Maryland. Wallace is paralyzed from the waist down.

November 27, 1978 – San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk are murdered by Dan White.

December 10, 1986 – Mount Pleasant, Iowa Mayor Edward King is shot and killed by Ralph Davis at a city council meeting.

February 7, 2008 – Kirkwood, Missouri Mayor Mike Swoboda and six others are shot when Charles Thornton opens fire at Kirkwood City Hall. Swoboda passes away seven months later due to complications.

Ambassadors

August 28, 1968 – US Ambassador to Guatemala John Gordon Mein is killed by guerrillas in Guatemala City, Guatemala.

March 2, 1973 – US Ambassador to Sudan Cleo Noel Jr. is killed by Palestinian militants at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Khartoum, Sudan.

August 19, 1974 – US Ambassador to Cyprus Rodger P. Davies is shot and killed during a protest outside the US embassy following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.

June 16, 1976 – US Ambassador to Lebanon Francis E. Meloy Jr. is kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian militants in Beirut, Lebanon.

February 14, 1979 – US Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph Dubs is kidnapped and killed by militants in Kabul, Afghanistan.

September 11, 2012 – US Ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens is killed in an attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

A DC trial was wrapping up when jurors made a discovery that shocked the courtroom

By CNN
(CNN) — The charges at a monthlong criminal trial in Washington’s federal court last month were fairly straightforward: That one man had allegedly held up seven 7-Elevens and a few other gas stations in spring 2023 and stolen cars.But the trial of Shamell Naquan Joyner had a twist. While deliberating, jurors found a Chinese yuan in one sweatshirt that was in evidence. And inside a jacket that was also part of the case, they found suspicious white powder in a folded up piece of paper. The prosecutors and judge said it appeared to be drugs.The DC US Attorney’s Office, law enforcement on the case and the defense team hadn’t known.The events of the jury deliberation raised eyebrows across the federal court in recent days, as word spread of what happened.Several longtime lawyers in Washington told CNN last week they hadn’t heard of a situation as embarrassing as this one, though some former prosecutors in DC conceded that every few years, a jury might land upon a piece of evidence that wasn’t examined by law enforcement thoroughly enough.Judge Rudolph Contreras, who presided over the trial, was flabbergasted.“The Court shares Mr. Joyner’s amazement at law enforcement’s failure to uncover the Chinese Yuan, note, and powdery substance in the physical evidence,” the judge, who has a decade of experience on the bench, wrote in an opinion a few days later.“Mr. Liolos, who I know is from New York, is probably astonished that any money got past the police department,” the judge also said on the bench, referring to John Liolos, one of Joyner’s lawyers.The FBI declined to comment when asked how agents on the case weren’t aware of the drugs and money in the pockets.When asked about how the evidence oversight happened, a spokesperson for the DC US Attorney’s Office didn’t answer directly.The accusationsProsecutors alleged Joyner had robbed 10 convenience stores and gas stations in central Washington, Maryland and northern Virginia in the spring of 2023. The robberies at first started a few days apart in April, then by May 2, Joyner was hitting several in the same day, they alleged. He also was accused of armed carjackings around two of the days that the armed robberies occurred.The series of incidents resulted in a 28-count indictment against Joyner in 2003. He wasn’t charged with drug possession.The case was big for the US Attorney’s Office. The trial lasted a full month, with the jury hearing witnesses testify over 10 trial days, then deliberations lasting another week. Joyner had as many as nine lawyers and three prosecutors at trial.The discoveryAs the jury was leaving on July 22, their second day of deliberations, a juror told courthouse staff they had found some items inside a jacket and a sweatshirt found in one of the carjacked cars that had been worn by the alleged robber.“We were looking at (the jacket), and (one of the jurors) reached in the breast pocket and she pulled out — it looked like a receipt, but there was a white powder or white substance inside,” the jury foreperson told the court on July 23, the next morning, according to a trial transcript obtained by CNN.“Some of it, kind of, spilled out a little bit, but (a juror) put it back in the pocket and we put it back in the bag,” the unnamed juror said.There was a sweatshirt the jurors could examine too as evidence in the jury room. A juror had looked in the pocket there “and he pulled out — it was crumpled up — it was a bill … one of the Chinese Yuan bills,” the foreperson then said.When the jurors found the suspected drugs and money in the pockets at the end of the second day of jury deliberations, the issue opened up major legal questions for Joyner.Both items of clothing had been key evidence putting Joyner at the scene of two of the May 2 robberies, and were inside the Toyota he was accused of stealing when police captured it a few days later.Would the jurors be prejudiced against Joyner now? Had the jury finding the suspected drugs corroborated witness testimony from the trial further than what Joyner’s defense lawyers anticipated?The Justice Department argued that a witness testified about Joyner stealing money during the armed robbery of four different convenience stores. At one of the 7-Elevens, a witness said the robber took his wallet, and it had in it a Chinese Yuan from a college study abroad trip.A cooperator who drove Joyner separately testified Joyner had paid him in drugs the night Joyner allegedly held up a gas station. The jacket with the apparent drugs in the pocket had been worn by the armed robber.After the discovery in the pockets, Contreras brought each of the jurors into the courtroom one by one.He told them the Chinese bill and the apparent drugs weren’t part of the evidence in the case. The jurors each told the court they could set aside those items in their consideration of the case against Joyner.They went back to deliberating.The verdictThe following Monday — the fifth day of deliberations — the jury had reached another predicament.They said they realized they couldn’t agree on more than half of the charges — representing five of the alleged armed robberies and one carjacking — Joyner faced.“The jury remains deadlocked on or unable to vote on the remaining 15 counts in this case,” they said in a note to the judge. “Our differences are in the areas of what constitutes a reasonable doubt and in how to determine identity beyond a reasonable doubt … In the absence of additional evidence or testimony, we cannot reach verdicts on the remaining 15 counts.”So, Contreras ended deliberations, taking a partial verdict.The diligence of the jury, unable to come to an agreement on several of the charges against Joyner, echoed an unusual challenge the US Attorney’s Office has faced in several other criminal trials this year.Still, the jury found Joyner guilty of 13 criminal charges, representing an armed robbery in mid-April 2023 in downtown Washington, and four armed robberies and a carjacking on May 2, 2023, in Northwest Washington and Maryland. “The jury’s verdict ensures the defendant will face a 31year mandatory minimum sentence, making the D.C. community safer with this serial robber off the streets,” a spokesperson from the US Attorney’s Office said about the case.Joyner’s defense attorneys haven’t yet appealed his conviction. They declined to comment because a final judgment in the case is not set in stone.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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