John W. Hinckley, the man who tried to assassinate then-President of the United States Ronald Reagan in 1981, prepares a summer performance. It will be on July 8 when he gives a concert in Brooklyn, as he himself has informed the local press.
Hinckley, 67, who has spent four decades on supervised release, will be released without restriction from June 15 and wants to celebrate in style. At a hearing last week in federal court in the District of Columbia, Judge Paul Friedman remarked that he was confident he would do well for Hinckley “in the years that remain.”
Since July 2016, when he left the psychiatric hospital where he was admitted, Hinckley has lived under strict restrictions. Until that date, he was closed in hospital after on March 30, 1981, at the age of 25, he opened fire on Reagan at the doors of the Washington Hilton Hotel.
Today he lives in Williamsburg (Virginia), about 250 kilometers from Washington, with his mother, Jo Ann Hinckley, who died last year. When he was allowed to leave the hospital, the judge ordered Hinckley to be subject to strict conditions that included traveling to Washington once a month for psychiatric treatment.
In addition, restrictions were imposed on the use of the internet, although in 2020 he obtained a judicial authorization to broadcast music online in an account in his name. Through that account Hinkley has announced his July concert, which will be the starting signal for a tour entitled Redemption that will also take him to Connecticut and Chicago (Illinois).
Following the announcement of his full release, he thanked all the people who had helped him obtain it, adding “What a long and strange journey it has been. Now is the time for rock and roll.”
