June 5, 1968: Five years following his brother’s assassination, Robert F. Kennedy was shot and fatally wounded at the Ambassador Hotel following his victory in the California Primary. He died the following day at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.
Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel, and he was pronounced dead the following day.
Kennedy, a United States senator and candidate in the 1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries, won the California and South Dakota primaries on June 4. He addressed his campaign supporters in the Ambassador Hotel’s Embassy Ballroom. After leaving the podium, and exiting through a kitchen hallway, he was mortally wounded by multiple shots fired by Sirhan. Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital nearly 25 hours later. His body was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Sirhan, a Palestinian who held strong anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian beliefs, testified in 1969 that he killed Kennedy “with 20 years of malice aforethought”; he was convicted and sentenced to death. Due to People v. Anderson, his sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972 with a possibility of parole. As of April 2023, his parole request has been denied 17 times.
Kennedy’s assassination prompted the Secret Service to protect presidential candidates, and his assassination has led to several conspiracy theories. No credible evidence has emerged that Sirhan was not the shooter, or that he did not act alone. It has been described as one of four major assassinations in the United States that occurred during the 1960s.