Hill received awards and was promoted for actions that day but for decades blamed himself for then president\u2019s death<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who leapt on to the back of John F Kennedy<\/a>\u2019s limousine after the then president was shot, then was forced to retire early because he remained haunted by memories of the assassination, died on Friday. He was 93.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hill died at home in Belvedere, California<\/a>, according to his publisher, Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. A cause of death was not given.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although few may recognize his name, the footage of Hill, captured on Abraham Zapruder\u2019s chilling home movie of the assassination, provided some of the most indelible images of Kennedy\u2019s assassination in Dallas on 22 November 1963.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hill received Secret Service<\/a> awards and was promoted for his actions that day, but for decades blamed himself for Kennedy\u2019s death, saying he didn\u2019t react quickly enough and would gladly have given his life to save Kennedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf I had reacted just a little bit quicker. And I could have, I guess,\u201d a weeping Hill told Mike Wallace on CBS\u2019s 60 Minutes in 1975, shortly after he retired at age 43 at the urging of his doctors. \u201cAnd I\u2019ll live with that to my grave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was only in recent years that Hill said he was able to finally start putting the assassination behind him and accept what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the day of the assassination, Hill was assigned to protect the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, and was riding on the left running board of the follow-up car directly behind the presidential limousine as it made its way through Dealey Plaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hill told the Warren Commission that he reacted after hearing a shot and seeing the president slump in his seat. The president was struck by a fatal headshot before Hill was able to make it to the limousine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zapruder\u2019s film captured Hill as he leaped from the Secret Service car, grabbed a handle on the limousine\u2019s trunk and pulled himself on to it as the driver accelerated. He forced Jackie Kennedy, who had crawled on to the trunk, back into her seat as the limousine sped off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hill later became the agent in charge of the White House protective detail and eventually an assistant director of the Secret Service, retiring because of what he characterized as deep depression and recurring memories of the assassination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 1993 Clint Eastwood thriller In the Line of Fire, about a former Secret Service agent scarred by the JFK assassination, was inspired in part by Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n