67-year-old John Hinckley, who shot and wounded US President Ronald Reagan in 1981, has been freed from court oversight after being under legal and mental health supervision for decades.
“After 41 years 2 months and 15 days, FREEDOM AT LAST!!!,” he wrote on Twitter on Wednesday, addressing his almost 30,000 followers.
Hinckley was acquitted of trying to kill Reagan after being declared insane, and he spent most of the past forty years in a Washington mental hospital.
Reagan was wounded in the abdomen in the shooting, but his press secretary, James Brady, was paralyzed by a bullet that hit him. He passed away in 2014. The shooting also injured a Secret Service agent and a police officer.
Hinckley was 25 at the time and determined to have been suffering from acute psychosis. In 2016, he was released from mental hospital and given permission to live with his mother under various restrictions, after experts said his mental illness had been in remission for decades. When his mother passed away, he continued to live in the Williamsburg area alone.