American Hero - Leslie Coffelt

Back in February of 2008, I posted a story that I called "Lolita and the Waterjet", it is still posted under my archives so you can go back and check the veracity of this statement if you so desire. This article touched on the attack on Congress by four Puerto Rican Nationalists back in 1954 that was led by Lolita Lebron. Four years prior to this attack, two other Puerto Rican Nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, attempted to assassinate the President of the United States.

On November 21, 1948, President Truman and his family moved out of the White House in order for it to be rebuilt. While this rebuilding was underway, the President lived across the street at the Blair-Lee House. When Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola came to Washington to shoot the President on November 1, 1950, they didn't even know that the Truman family wasn't living in the White House and only learned of this when they were told by their cab driver.

It is has been estimated that the shootout at the Blair-Lee House lasted less than 40 seconds. Oscar Collazo fired repeatedly and reloaded to fire again. He had shot Officer Donald Birdzell in the knee and then he was shot in the chest and went down, but the shot was not fatal. Griselio Torresola walked up to an unsuspecting White House Policeman, Leslie Coffelt, and shot him three times while he sat at his station. These wounds would turn out to be fatal. Griselio turned and shot Birdzell also, but in the other knee and Donald Birdzell lay bleeding in the street, but he would live. Officer Joe Downs, returning from getting groceries, walks into the gunfight and is shot by Griselio in the right hip. Before Downs can escape into the house he is shot again twice, but he will live as well. Now Griselio Torresola is reloading to continue his assault on the President. Somehow, Leslie Coffelt drags himself from his guard shack, bleeding profusely and staggering he takes aim, one shot and Torresola is shot through the head and he is dead on the lawn. Leslie Coffelt makes it to the hospital but dies within 4 hours. The gunfight is over and the President is unharmed.

This loss of Leslie Coffelt weighed heavily on President Truman and it has been suggested that his decision not to run for reelection in 1952 was partly due to the pain he suffered because of this incident. He explained to columnist Drew Pearson of the Washington Post, "Did you ever stop to think how you would feel if another man laid down his life for you? Well that's the way I feel about Leslie Coffelt. It's men like him or some other good man who are really in danger in situations like that, not the President..."

I find it odd that until I recently read "American Gunfight" by Stephen Hunter and John Bainbridge, Jr., I never really knew of the courageous, duty bound, dying effort of Leslie Coffelt. I wonder how many of you learned of this in your American History classes.

Oscar Collazo's sentence was commuted to time served by President Jimmy Carter after spending 29 years in jail and was later decorated by Cuba's Fidel Castro as a hero. Collazo lived to be 80 years old; Leslie Coffelt lived just half that time.