Dave Elroy Walshe (El to his workmates) prefers woollen jumpers two sizes too large ;   he enjoys the freedom.    In his mid-twenties, a slim 5'9", not the sharpest tool in the box but bright enough to realise that he is a loser, with no friends and few social skills, he knows his life so far is a failure.     Although married he is constantly at odds with his wife and her several-times-weekly harangues - "When are we going to stop moving around from pillar to post ?   We can’t go on living on your pittance.   You think it’s all going to fall into your lap ;   well, it's not !  Get a decent job !”.   She has taken their two small children to stay with a friend while Elroy lives in a rented room.

       Unfazed, this lunchtime he sits by the top sixth-storey open window of his workplace looking down at the crowd in the plaza eighty feet below, his eyes following the fore-shortened figure of a street-vendor moving slowly, chatting, hawking sunglasses.    In five minutes the parade of a dozen motor vehicles will pass below – Presidential and Vice-Presidential parties, state, government and national officials, police, press, cameramen.

       Elroy’s wife is a great admirer of the President ;  he is popular, wealthy, successful, charismatic, with a beautiful wife and children ;  everything that Elroy is not.    And now the man who has it all will be flaunting himself under Elroy’s window !    Well, Elroy has had enough ;  hardened by disappointment, he doesn’t care ;  he doesn’t measure the odds of success or failure, or their consequences, he doesn’t have a detailed plan ;  he just doesn’t care ;  he is going to show them.   This chance has been dangled under his nose and he is going to take it !

       His IranChrome-LacCann 6.5 mm rifle is not the weapon of choice :  ex-World-War-II, firing full-metal-jacket rounds, it is heavy, unwieldy, manual-loading, cheap :  $20 mail order. He ejects the spent cartridge he keeps in situ to obviate dust, loads a live round by slamming the breech-block forward and, his left arm relaxed on the window-sill, watches and waits.

       The hundreds-strong crowd is happy and expectant, hand-held flags waving, small children hoisted onto shoulders.   Weather fine and warm, a breeze caressing cheeks, sunlight flashing through leafage.

       With police motorcycle outriders, speed a steady, stately 11 mph, the motorcade eases through the throng towards Elroy’s workplace, slows to turn left under his window and then smoothes away, the President's open Lincoln Convertible limousine second in line.   Through trees lining the plaza Elroy has a receding view of the President in the right rear seat next to his wife.   Already poised, he takes a bead on the head and shoulders and squeezes the trigger.   The slug hits the kerb just behind the limo ;  ricochet bullet fragments and road chips are thrown up and forwards, hitting bystanders and the President ;  slapping himself on the neck he cries out “My God, I’m hit !”.

       It takes Elroy four seconds to eject, reload, aim and fire again ;  by now the limo is in clear sight.   His second shot, coming down at a sixteen-degree angle, hits the President, penetrating his back lower neck, grazing his vertebræ, brushing his spinal cord and exiting his upper chest.   From the moment of impact the President is oblivious to what is happening, the blood pressure to his brain dropping sufficiently to render him unconscious ; his head nods forward.