Clint Hill dies at 93, the secret agent who tried to save the life of John F. Kennedy

Clint Hillthe US secret service agent who jumped on the John Kennedy limousine To protect the death injured from death and that for a long time he wondered if he could have saved him acting faster, he has died at the age of 93. Hill, who is seen in the images of the murder climbing at the back of the presidential limousine to reach the president and his wife, Jacqueline, has died in peace at home, as reported by the family in a statement.

«Heroism of Hill on November 22, 1963, during the murder of President John F. Kennedy, made him a World Symbol of courage and on a venerated icon of the United States Secret Service», Says the statement.

North Dakota’s native, Hill had been part of the detachment of Dwight Eisenhower presidential protection And he considered it a descent of category when he was assigned to the wife of President -elect Kennedy in 1960. But in November 1963, this 31 -year -old secret service became part of the story.

That day, while the presidential delegation passed by a crowd in the center of Dallas, Hill ran alternatively next to the Kennedy limousine, Standing in your rear stirrups or mounted on the stirrups of the car that was going just behind. While he was near Texas School Book Depository Building, Hill heard what he first thought it was a firecracker and then saw Kennedy stagger and grab his throat. When Hill ran out of the vehicle that followed him, The president was hit by a second and a third shot while Hill crawled to the back of the Kennedy car, that accelerated.

The only agent who jumped to Kennedy’s limousine

A 26 -second film filmed by the spectator Abraham Zapruder, which is considered one of the key chronicles of the murder, captured Hill jumping to the presidential limousine, the only agent of the secret service that ran to the vehicle. He directed the bloody Mrs. Kennedy, who seemed to crawl to the back of the car to collect pieces of the president’s head, back to her seat and then He covered them both with his body while the limousine moved away at full speed.

At the Parkland hospital, where Kennedy would be declared dead, Hill said the first lady resisted letting her husband’s body release until Hill took off her suit jacket and covered with her the horrible wound of Kennedy’s head. Shortly after, another secret service agent told Hill that the president had died, and then he found the hospital phone talking to Kennedy’s brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. “He told me: ‘Well, how bad is it?” Hill recalled in a 2013 interview with CBS News. «Well, I didn’t want to tell him that his brother had died. I didn’t think it was my place. So I said: ‘It’s as bad as it may be.’ And when I said that hung the phone ».

Hill, who would be close to Mrs. Kennedy during the next four days, then called a funeral to Dallas to get a coffin for Kennedy and later He helped load him at the Air Force One for the return to Washington. He also accompanied the body and Mrs. Kennedy to the autopsy. During a private wake of the body and Mrs. Kennedy’s request, Hill found scissors so she could cut a Kennedy hair strand before the burial.

Hill’s problems: alcoholism, depression and nightmares

Hill received a mention for his work but, like other agents in the detachment that day, they tormented thoughts about what he should have done. Alcoholism, depression, alienation and nightmares seized it in the following years. In a tearful interview granted in 1976 to Mike Wallace for the ’60 minutes’ program of the CBS, he regretted not having reached the car in time to shoot the third shot himself. “It was my fault,” said Hill. “If I had reacted a little faster … I’ll take it to the grave.” Wallace would later write that “he had never interviewed a more afflicted and tormented man” than Hill.

In the 2013 CBS interview, Hill said he found a degree of redemption when he returned to Dallas in 1990, He walked through the area where the shooting occurred and entered the school deposit building that the murderer Lee Harvey Oswald used as his sniper hanger.

“And after a couple of hours I came out knowing that I did everything I could that day,” he said. “But I still had that feeling of guilt and responsibility because I was the only one who had a chance and I could not do anything.”

Hill said in his 2014 book ‘five days of November’ that he did not support the theories that Oswald had accomplices or was not the true murderer. After the murder, Hill continued as Mrs. Kennedy’s guard, with whom he had strengthened ties, before being reallocated to Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, and later Vice President Spiro Agnew during the Nixon administration. He retired from the Secret Service in 1975.

With his wife, the journalist Lisa McCubbin, Hill wrote four books about her experiences: ‘Five presidents: my extraordinary trip with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford’, ‘Mrs. Kennedy and I’, ‘five days of November ‘And’ My trips with Mrs. Kennedy ‘.