World News
Reagan shooter released from institution─── 10:37 Sun, 11 Sep 2016
Washington - John Hinckley, the man who attempted to assassinate US President Ronald Reagan 35 years ago, has been freed from a psychiatric hospital in the US capital Washington DC.
A federal judge ruled in late July that Hinckley is not a danger to himself or the public and can live full-time at his mother's home in Williamsburg.
As a 25-year-old college dropout, Hinckley had grown fixated upon actress Jodie Foster and the Martin Scorsese film "Taxi Driver," in which she played a teenage prostitute.
Inspired by the film's main character, who plots to kill a presidential candidate, Hinckley opened fire on Reagan outside a Washington DC hotel on March 30, 1981.
The shooting, which disabled James Brady, the White House Press Secretary of the time, helped launch the modern gun control movement, and a 1993 bill named after him imposed background checks and a waiting period.
