GUN BATTLE AT BLAIR HOUSE

JFK+50:  Volume 6, No. 2116

PUERTO RICAN NATIONALISTS ATTEMPT TO KILL PRESIDENT 

Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) Sixty-six years ago this afternoon, November 1, 1950, President Harry S Truman was napping on the second floor of Blair House* on Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House was in the process of undergoing renovation.

Two Puerto Rican nationalists, or "independistas", walked down the sidewalk toward Blair House from opposite directions.  The nationalists wanted full independence from the United States.

They had arrived in the Capital the day before on a train from New York City. The pair were armed with two 9mm semiautomatic pistols--a Luger and a Walther P-38.

At 2 p.m., the would-be assassins were involved in a desperate gun battle with White House police officers and secret service agents.   Truman, awakened from his nap, came to the window to see what was going on outside.  He was quickly ordered to take cover by agents.

One of the Puerto Ricans, identified as Griselio Torresola, was killed by Officer Leslie Coffelt, who himself was mortally wounded in the gun battle.  The other man, identified as Oscar Collazo, managed to reach the steps of Blair House before he collapsed from a bullet in the chest.

Collazo had fired 9 rounds from the P-38 with only 1 hit, while Torresola, who was killed by a shot in the ear, fired 8 rounds from the Luger.  He was attempting to reload when he was killed.

Two other police officers, Donald Birdzell and Joseph Downs, were wounded but survived.  Officer Coffelt died that afternoon from multiple gunshot wounds.  The Truman family had a single fresh red rose placed on his grave at Arlington every day. 

Oscar Collazo was found guilty of homicide on March 7, 1951.  He received the death penalty but that sentence was commuted to life in prison by President Truman.  In 1979, Collazo became a free man by the commutation of President Jimmy Carter.

*Blair House was built in 1824 & was the home of Dr. Joseph Lovell, the 1st surgeon general of the US Army.  Francis Preston Blair, editor of the Globe, moved into the home with his wife, Eliza, & 3 children in 1830.

SOURCES  

Blair House, The President's Guest House, www.blairhouse.org/

Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, Independence, Missouri

True Crime:  Assassination, Editors of Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1994.

Blair House

Washington, D.C

Photo by John White (2003)