Sirhan Sirhan Stabbed, Robert Francis Kennedy’s Assassin Reportedly Attacked in Prison
Sirhan Sirhan, the notorious assassin that killed Sen. Robert Francis Kennedy, has been stabbed in prison, according to TMZ. The outlet quoted sources at Richard. J. Donovan Correctional Facility, who said Sirhan was assaulted Friday.
Sources say the attack occurred in the yard at the San Diego-area correctional facility at about 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday afternoon. So severe was the attack on the assassin that he wasn’t able to be treated in the prison’s infirmary, and instead was transferred to a hospital on the outside for treatment. It remains unclear, as of this writing, which hospital he was taken to. He remains in stable condition, according to sources.
Sirhan’s alleged assailant has been identified by prison officials and placed in isolation. An investigation will determine if any charges will be filed in this incident.
The prison where Sirhan is incarcerated includes other famous criminals as well, including Marion “Suge” Knight, who is doing time for manslaughter; the Menendez brothers; and Manson Family member Tex Watson. Sirhan had been there since November 2013, having done time at various California prisons, some worse than others, over the course of his life. He was transferred to Donovan from the California State Prison in Corcoran on the 50th anniversary of RFK’s assassination; however, as NBC News reported at the time, the timing of the move was merely coincidental and was a matter of routine transfers of inmates due to housing needs within California’s correctional system.
Just In: Sirhan Sirhan, the man who assassinated Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, was stabbed in a San Diego-area state prison, law enforcement officials say. https://t.co/HPFBhfOJ8P
— NBC Los Angeles (@NBCLA) August 31, 2019
On June 5, 1968, Sirhan, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship, shot and mortally wounded Robert F. Kennedy, the younger brother of John F. Kennedy, who had himself been killed by an assassin’s bullet five years earlier. RFK had finished up a speaking engagement at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when Sirhan fired a.22 caliber Iver-Johnson Cadet revolver at the Senator.
Authors George Plimpton, Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, as well as former professional football player Rosey Grier and Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson, were among the men in the crowd who helped subdue and detain Sirhan until police arrived.
Sirhan was never circumspect about his motive for assassinating Kennedy; as The New York Times reported in 1989, the assassin freely admitted that Kennedy’s support of Israel was the reason.
“My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 [fighter jet] bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians,” he said.
