Before Trump, President Ford survived 2 assassination attempts in 3 weeks in California

Lynette Fromme sits in a U.S. marshal’s car in Sacramento after her attempt to assassinate President Ford. In September 1975, President Ford escaped two assassination attempts, one in Sacramento and the other in San Francisco. Sept. 5, 1975 | Sacramento Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, was 26 when she pointed a pistol at Ford in Sacramento. Then, he said, he noticed the gun, a.45-caliber Colt semiautomatic pistol, adding that “the weapon was large.” The Times’ Christopher Goffard looked back on the case earlier this year. The assassination attempts — Fromme’s in Sacramento and Moore’s in San Francisco — also contributed to “an atmosphere of lawlessness” in Northern California, Starr said, compounded by such 1970s events as the Patty Hearst kidnapping, the slaying of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and the mass suicide of the Jonestown cultists.