THE man who tried to assassinate US president Ronald Reagan will be allowed to leave a Washington mental hospital as early as next week to live in the community.
John Hinckley Jr will be allowed to live full-time at his mother’s home in Virginia after a ruling by Judge Paul L Friedman.
The ruling that Hinckley is ready to live in the community comes more than 35 years after the March 30, 1981 shooting outside a Washington hotel in which then-president Reagan and three others were injured.
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Doctors said for years the now 61-year-old Hinckley, found not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting, is no longer plagued by the mental illness that drove him to shoot Mr Reagan.
For more than a year he has been allowed to spend 17 days a month at his mother’s home where he will now live full-time.
Hinckley was 25 when he shot Reagan, Press Secretary James Brady, Washington police officer Thomas
Delahanty and US Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy with a .22-caliber pistol outside the Washington Hilton.
Each survived, but Mr Brady was confined to a wheelchair until his 2014 death.
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Hinckley claimed he carried out the shooting to impress actress Jodie Foster, on whom he obsessed after repeated viewings of her film Taxi Driver.
The judge ordered him not to contact those he injured, their relatives or Ms Foster.
He was also banned from giving any interviews.
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