John Schrank

John Flammang Schrank (5th March 1876 - 15th September 1943) was a Bavarian-born New York bartender who attempted to assassinate 26th US president Theodore Roosevelt.

Assassination attempt

On the 14 of October 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was about to give a speech at the Gilpatrick Hotel in Milwaukee when Schrank, who had been following Roosevelt from New Orleans to Milwaukee, pulled out a .38 calibre Colt Police Positive Special revolver and shot Roosevelt once in the chest. However, the bullet lodged in a folded copy of Roosevelt's speech which he fortunately had in his breast pocket. Schrank was then disarmed and taken down by secretary Elbert Martin, and pummelled by onlookers, who would have lynched him if Roosevelt hadn't intervened, ordering them to bring him forward. Roosevelt then asked him why he shot him, but he didn't answer and was taken away by police officers. Schrank would later claim that he tried to shoot Roosevelt as he had had a dream where William McKinley, a US president who was assassinated by Leon Czolgosz, told him to kill Roosevelt. He was deemed legally insane and committed to the Wisconsin State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he stayed for 29 years before dying of bronchial pneumonia.