LOS ANGELES (AP) – For almost a half a century, the Mexican immigrant busboy who held a dying Robert Kennedy blamed himself and wondered if he could have done more.
Juan Romero, now 67, for years, had asked himself what if Kennedy had not stopped to shake his hand.
In a rare interview, Romero told The Associated Press that he doesn’t hold the guilt anymore but believes he should have been the one to take that bullet. He’s still angry that Kennedy never got the opportunity to lead a fractured nation in 1968.
In this undated photo provided by StoryCorps, Juan Romero, 67, holds a photo of himself and the dying Sen. Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, taken by the Los Angeles Times’ Boris Yaro on June 5, 1968, at his home in Modesto, Calif. Associated Press Hollywood reporter Bob Thomas was on a one-night political assignment covering Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s victory celebration in the California presidential primary at the Ambassador Hotel when mayhem unfolded before his eyes. He heard pops of gunfire, then screams, and quickly rushed into the kitchen to see the dying Kennedy on the floor, blood oozing from his head. He found a phone and called the AP desk. “I’ve got a flash. Kennedy shot.” Sirhan Sirhan was later convicted of Kennedy’s murder. (Jud Esty-Kendall/StoryCorps via AP)
This week marks the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The site is now a high school that serves Latino and black students.
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