Reply #21: Makes sense, because the Secret Service also got lost in Washington DC

[DrDebug]

When the President was shot, if you'll remember, he was pushed into the car by a man named Jerry Parr(sp?) that was his Secret Service guard. Jerry Parr fell on top of him and, I just saw in the Reader's Digest where Jerry Parr was telling his "valiant story." And the limousine tore off, didn't it? Now it was five minutes later that the ambulance arrived and they put the Secret Service man, the Washington, D.C. policeman, and Brady in the ambulance and it roared off. Using normal time-rate/distance, who should have arrived at George Washington University Hospital first? The President should have. Well, who did? You know it's a trick question. The ambulance arrived 15 minutes before the President. When asked, "What happened?" the Secret Service simply responded, "We got lost."

The Secret Service does not get lost in Washington, D.C. They don't get lost in most places of the world. And so, now the investigation starts to get a little interesting. When they take Ronald Reagan in, they can see that he... matter of fact, his heart almost stopped. And he is convulsing; there's blood on his lips. They know he's hurt... seriously. But they can find no wounds. They X-ray him three times and can find nothing.

Finally, a nurse notices a tiny entrance wound right at the seventh rib, underneath the armpit. And a doctor takes a probe, and by... very carefully, because they couldn't see it on X-ray, the doctor is able to extract what he said was a planchet, thinner than a dime, that was one-quarter inch from Ronald Reagan's aorta.

Now, Ronald Reagan says... as a matter of fact, let me just see if I can just read it to you... best what Ronnie says. I've got all this in the book... This came right out of a newspaper:

I knew I had been hurt, but I thought that I'd been hurt by the Secret Service man landing on me in the car. As it was, I must say it was the most paralyzing pain. I've described it as if someone hit you with a hammer. But the sensation, it seemed to me, came after I was in the car and so I thought that maybe his gun or something had broken a rib. I set up on the seat, and the pain wouldn't go away - and suddenly, I found I was coughing up blood.

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~wbova/fn/history/bush.htm