Torresola approached the guard booth at the west corner of the Blair House and fired at Coffelt from close range. Torresola approached from the west side while Collazo engaged Secret Service agents and White House policemen from the east. He was living there because of a major renovation at the White House for structural problems. On November 1, 1950, would-be assassins Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo, nationalists who supported the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States, attacked officers at the Blair House in order to assassinate President Truman. Newsreel scenes in English of the assassination attempt on U.S. Three: Donald Birdzell, Oscar Collazo, Joseph Downs Ĭoffelt is buried at Arlington National Cemetery with his wife Cressie (1912–1985). In 1945, he returned to duty with the White House Police. Coffelt served less than two years and never made it overseas the Army gave him a medical discharge. That year, as the US entered World War II, Coffelt was drafted and assigned to B Company, 300th Infantry Regiment, United States Army. In 1942 he requested and was awarded a transfer to the White House Police. In 1941, Coffelt returned to the Metropolitan Police. In 1936, he resigned to become a building technician. He was assigned to Precinct 3, which ran the length of K Street. In 1928, Coffelt left Oranda to look for a job in Washington, D.C., and became a police officer with the Metropolitan Police Department in 1929. Coffelt was also a Freemason and a member of Potomac Lodge #5 F.A.A.M. They moved into an apartment in Washington. Coffelt and Morgan were married on October 5, 1937, in Prince George's County, Maryland. Coffelt was the second in his family to graduate from high school, and he was described by those who knew him as an expert sharpshooter.Ĭoffelt met Cressie Elinor Morgan of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, who was training to become a nurse. He grew up hunting and handling firearms. He had four siblings Harry, Hollis, Norman, and Mildred. Leslie Coffelt was born to Will Coffelt and Effie Keller in the Shenandoah Valley town of Oranda, Virginia. The other was convicted by a federal jury and sentenced to death Truman commuted the sentence to life imprisonment and Jimmy Carter released the man from jail in 1979.Īcknowledging the importance of the question of Puerto Rico's status, Truman authorized a referendum in Puerto Rico in 1952 to determine its relationship to the U.S. Though mortally wounded by three bullets, Coffelt returned fire moments later and killed one of the attackers with a single shot to the head. Truman against an attempted assassination on November 1, 1950, at Blair House, where the president was living during renovations at the White House.Ĭoffelt was wounded during the assassination attempt, which two Puerto Rican nationalists carried out. Leslie William Coffelt (Aug– November 1, 1950) was an officer of the White House Police, a branch of the Secret Service, who was killed while successfully defending U.S.
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