Death Attempt

Hinckley survives a suicide try

This time, John Hinckley was resolved that a death would occur. He had failed to kill President Reagan on a Washington sidewalk last March, and he had failed to kill himself two months later, in a North Carolina prison, by taking an overdose of painkillers. In the stockade at Fort Meade, Md., last week, Hinckley jammed the lock to his cell with a piece of cracker-box cardboard. Then he stood on a chair, knotted one sleeve of an Army field jacket around his neck and the other to an iron...

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