Assassin Targets Truman: Puerto Rican Independence Tensions Explode

Two Puerto Rican nationalists walked up to the front steps of Blair House in Washington, D.C., on November 1, 1950, armed with pistols and a willingness to die. Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo intended to assassinate President Harry S. Truman, who was napping in an upstairs bedroom while the residence underwent renovations that had temporarily moved the president from the White House across the street. The attack lasted barely three minutes but produced extraordinary violence. Torresola, the more experienced gunman, approached from the west and fatally shot White House Police Officer Leslie Coffelt in the chest. Coffelt, mortally wounded, raised his weapon and killed Torresola with a single shot to the head before collapsing. Collazo, approaching from the east, wounded Officer Donald Birdzell in the knee before being shot himself. Truman, awakened by the gunfire, appeared at a second-floor window before Secret Service agents screamed at him to get back. The attack was linked directly to the Puerto Rican independence movement, which had erupted in armed revolt just two days earlier. On October 30, nationalists led by Pedro Albizu Campos had launched an insurrection across the island, attacking the governor's mansion, police stations, and post offices in multiple towns. The Jayuya Uprising, as it became known, was suppressed by the Puerto Rico National Guard, which bombed and strafed the town of Jayuya. Collazo survived his wounds, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Truman commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, and President Jimmy Carter later freed Collazo in 1979. Officer Coffelt's sacrifice remained the most prominent Secret Service death in the line of duty until the agency's role expanded decades later. The episode exposed how vulnerable a president could be to a determined attacker in an era before modern security cordons.