The Lubbock Connection to a Presidential Assassination Attempt

Here's a piece of Lubbock history you may not have ever heard about.

One of the most infamous attempted assassins in American history once walked the campus of Texas Tech University.

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John Hinckley Jr. is best known for the shocking 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. But before he fired six shots outside a Washington, D.C., hotel, Hinckley spent several years as a student in Lubbock.

From Lubbock to Washington D.C.

Hinckley attended Texas Tech intermittently from 1973 through 1980, although he never graduated.

At the time, there was nothing particularly remarkable about his presence on campus. He was simply another student in Lubbock.

That changed dramatically on March 30th, 1981, when Hinckley attempted to assassinate Reagan outside the Washington Hilton.

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Hinckley fired six shots from a .22-caliber revolver as Reagan was leaving the hotel. The president was seriously wounded, along with White House Press Secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and Washington police officer Thomas Delahanty.
Reagan survived.

Hinckley was arrested and eventually put on trial.

The White House, Getty Images

The Jodie Foster Connection

The motive behind the shooting was bizarre.

Hinckley had become obsessed with actress Jodie Foster after watching the movie Taxi Driver. He believed that attempting to assassinate the president would somehow impress her.

It obviously did not work.nckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent decades in psychiatric institutions. He was eventually released from court supervision in 2022.

Suddenly, Everybody Was Talking About Texas Tech

When reporters discovered Hinckley had attended Texas Tech, Lubbock suddenly found itself attached to one of the biggest national stories of the era.

And some of the coverage wasn't exactly flattering.

Texas Tech professor Bill Dean later recalled that Hinckley's connection to the university prompted national media attention and some rather exaggerated portrayals of West Texas.

According to Dean, some reports essentially portrayed Texas Tech as a place where students wandered around campus carrying guns and suggested that Lubbock was basically the Wild West.

Apparently the national media had never actually been to Lubbock.

Dominik Bindl, Getty Images

Another Lubbock Case

Hinckley isn't the only person connected to Lubbock whose activities later became the subject of a major federal investigation.

In 2011, Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, a Saudi Arabian student living in Lubbock, was arrested after investigators uncovered evidence that he was attempting to obtain chemicals for a bomb and had researched potential targets in the United States.

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He was later convicted of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.

So the next time somebody asks you for a strange piece of Lubbock history, you've got a pretty good one: The man who attempted to assassinate an American president once went to Texas Tech.

That's one piece of Hub City trivia you probably won't find on the welcome sign.