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Joe Zangara's shooting arm was suddenly shoved up in the air by the frail hand of Lillian Johns Cross, wife of a Miami physician. From the row behind, Thomas Armour, a lanky Miami contractor, reached forward, also grabbed that lethal arm. But Zangara's fingers kept working the stiff trigger.
Bang! Mrs. Joseph Gill, wife of the president of Florida Power and Light Co., staggered down the bandstand steps, grievously wounded in the abdomen.
Bang! Blood spurted through the white hair of William Sinnott, an oldtime New York City detective who used to guard Governor Roosevelt and, who, vacationing in Florida, had come to watch the doings from the bandstand.
Bang! A bullet nicked the forehead of Russell Caldwell, Coconut Grove youth.
In five confused seconds the fusillade was over. The crowd was roaring, "GET THAT MAN! GET HIM!" An avalanche of spectators and police smashed down on small Joe Zangara, buried him under a mill of arms, legs and bodies. Down with him also went nervy little Mrs. Cross, the breath knocked out of her 100-lb. body. Handcuffs were forced on Joe Zangara's wrists. Furious hands clamped his arms and neck.
Behind a barrier of Secret Service guards President-elect Roosevelt stood up in his car, waved his arms at the panicky onlookers. His clear voice rang strongly above the din: "I'm all right! I'm all right." His car started out of the packed people. Somebody jumped on the running board yelling: "Mayor Cermak's shot." Mr. Roosevelt had the car stopped. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed. "Bring him here. Put him in my car." Supported by William Wood, Dade County Democratic leader, Chicago's "World's Fair Mayor,"* sagging with shock, was lifted into the Roosevelt machine. The President-elect held him in his arms as they streaked away to the Jackson Memorial Hospital behind shrieking police sirens.
(Back in the Park.) "Kill him! Kill him! Lynch him!" cried angry voices in the crowd around Joe Zangara. The police yanked him to a waiting car into which some of his victims were being loaded. They shoved him onto the trunk rack, mounted guard on the bumpers. The car jerked forward. Joe Zangara fell off. Police threw him back on, held him down.
Thus bouncing around on the trunk rack the would-be assassin of the next President rode first to the hospital to unload his victims, then to Miami's skyscraper jail where he was stripped and safely locked up on the 21st floor.
(At the Hospital.) Physicians found that a bullet had grazed Mayor Cermak's liver and lodged at the back of his abdomen in his spine. His condition was critical. Mrs. Gill was on the brink of death as the result of a stomach wound. The other three were suffering only from flesh wounds.
Canceling his special train home, President-elect Roosevelt lingered at the hospital. He went in softly to see Mayor Cermak after the nurses got him comfortable in bed. His face taut with pain, the Mayor looked up at the President-elect and murmured: "I'm mighty glad it was me instead of you. I wish you'd be careful. The country needs you."
"And the country needs men like you, Tony," replied Mr. Roosevelt.
Back on the Nourmahal for the night, Mr. Roosevelt, as he said later, "slept like a top."