Robert F. Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles
On this day · 5 June 1968
Minutes after claiming victory in California, the senator and presidential hopeful was gunned down in a hotel kitchen passage.
On June 5, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, only minutes after declaring victory in the California Democratic primary. He had just left the ballroom and was cutting through a kitchen pantry to greet supporters when Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old gunman, opened fire at close range.
Kennedy — former attorney general, brother of the assassinated President John F. Kennedy, and a leading contender for the 1968 nomination — was mortally wounded. He died the next morning, June 6, at age 42.
The shooting came barely two months after the killing of Martin Luther King Jr., deepening a sense that the era’s hopes were being shot away one by one.
He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, near his brother, in the cemetery’s only nighttime funeral. Sirhan was convicted of murder in 1969.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
