Clint Hill, the US secret service agent who leapt onto the back of John F Kennedy’s limousine after the president was shot, has died aged 93.
Mr Hill, who was forced to retire early because he remained haunted by memories of the assassination, died at his home in Belvedere, California, his publisher said.
A cause of death was not given.
Although few may recognise his name, the footage of Mr Hill, captured on Abraham Zapruder’s chilling home movie of the assassination, provided some of the most indelible images of Mr Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on November 22 1963.
Mr Hill received secret service awards and was promoted for his actions that day, but for decades blamed himself for Mr Kennedy’s death, saying he did not react quickly enough and would gladly have given his life to save the president.
‘If I had reacted just a little bit quicker. And I could have, I guess,’ a weeping Mr Hill told Mike Wallace on CBS’ 60 Minutes in 1975, shortly after he retired aged 43 at the urging of his doctors. ‘And I’ll live with that to my grave.’
It was only in recent years that Mr Hill said he was able to finally start putting the assassination behind him and accept what happened.
On the day of the assassination, Mr Hill was assigned to protect first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and was riding on the left running board of the follow-up car directly behind the presidential limousine as it made its way through Dealey Plaza.
Mr Hill told the Warren Commission that he reacted after hearing a shot and seeing the president slump in his seat. The president was struck by a fatal headshot before Mr Hill was able to make it to the limousine.
Mr Zapruder’s film captured Mr Hill as he leapt from the secret service car, grabbed a handle on the limousine’s boot and pulled himself onto it as the driver accelerated. He forced Mrs Kennedy, who had crawled onto the boot, back into her seat as the limousine sped off.
Mr Hill later became the agent in charge of the White House protective detail and eventually an assistant director of the secret service, retiring because of what he characterised as deep depression and recurring memories of the assassination.
The 1993 Clint Eastwood thriller In The Line Of Fire, about a former secret service agent scarred by the JFK assassination, was inspired in part by Mr Hill.
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