Leslie Coffelt

Leslie William Coffelt (August 15, 1910 – 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. President Harry S. Truman against an attempted assassination on November 1, 1950, at Blair House, where the president was living during renovations at the White House.

Coffelt was wounded during the assassination attempt, which two Puerto Rican nationalists carried out.

Though mortally wounded by three bullets, Coffelt returned fire moments later and killed one of the attackers with a single shot to the head.

Coffelt is buried at Arlington National Cemetery with his wife Cressie (1912–1985).

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.

He was assigned to Precinct 3, which ran the length of K Street.

That year, as the US entered World War II, Coffelt was drafted and assigned to B Company, 300th Infantry Regiment, United States Army.

Coffelt served less than two years and never made it overseas; the Army gave him a medical discharge.

In 1936, he resigned to become a building technician.

Coffelt and Morgan were married on October 5, 1937, in Prince George's County, Maryland.

They moved into an apartment in Washington.

Coffelt was also a Freemason and a member of Potomac Lodge #5 F.A.A.M. in Georgetown, Washington D.C.

In 1941, Coffelt returned to the Metropolitan Police.

In 1942 he requested and was awarded a transfer to the White House Police.

In 1945, he returned to duty with the White House Police.

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.

He was living there because of a major renovation at the White House for structural problems.

Torresola approached from the west side while Collazo engaged Secret Service agents and White House policemen from the east.

Torresola approached the guard booth at the west corner of the Blair House and fired at Coffelt from close range.

His three shots struck Coffelt in the chest and abdomen, mortally wounding him.

A fourth shot passed through the policeman's tunic.

Torresola shot two other policemen before running out of ammunition, then moved to the left of the Blair House steps to reload.

Coffelt went out of his booth and fired at Torresola from 31 ft away, hitting him behind the ear and killing him instantly.

Coffelt limped back to the booth and blacked out.

He died of his wounds four hours later in a hospital.

He was survived by his wife, Cressie Elinor Coffelt (née Morgan), and stepdaughter, Cora Jane Wilson.

A civilian named Elroy Sites was near Coffelt and helped put him into an ambulance stretcher after the shooting.

President Truman wrote in a letter a short time later:

I'm sorry I didn’t get to talk to you and (cousin) Nellie at the dinner or after it.

But I'm really a prisoner now.

...The grand guards who were hurt in the attempt on me didn't have a fair chance.

The one who was killed was just cold bloodedly murdered before he could do anything.

But his assassin did not live but a couple of minutes – one of the S.S. (Secret Service) men put a bullet in one ear and it came out the other...

Acknowledging 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.

Leslie Coffelt was born to Will Coffelt and Effie Keller in the Shenandoah Valley town of Oranda, Virginia.

He had four siblings; Harry, Hollis, Norman, and Mildred.

He grew up hunting and handling firearms.

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.

Coffelt met Cressie Elinor Morgan of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, who was training to become a nurse.

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.