There was no exit wound. The president's dark blood kept flowing from a tube inserted in his chest.
X-Rays revealed the bullet's precarious position.
"It was situated in a pretty vile place," Aaron said. "The first thing that went through my mind was, is this a salvageable case?"
In the operating room
Reagan's bleeding hadn't stopped even after doctors had re-expanded his lung. Given how near the bullet was lodged to his heart, they decided to operate.
WASHINGTON -- President Reagan often wore a bullet proof vest during the campaign but he did not have one on during the crucial moment when a would-be assassin fired at him
Below is the link to the Secret Service Report. The Secret Service says Reagan "was not" wearing a bulletproof vest.
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.secretservice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2020-05/Reagan_Assassination_Attempt_Interview_Reports.pdf
I might add there is no way this wound was from a ricochet. To penetrate that deeply the bullet had to hit head on to puncture the lung and then lodge that close to the heart. As I said before if the bullet had entered head on into the chest from the front the .22 bullet would have killed Reagan.
Here is the actual video. No way was Reagan hit by a ricochet, the car was clearly behind Reagan when he was shot. A shot bouncing off of the car would had to reverse direction and could not have had anywhere near the penetration necessary to penetrate that deeply into Reagan's body.
https://nortonsafe.search.ask.com/v...23.0.4&qo=ds&ctype=videos&videoId=N1Jid5uRFo4
By the way I myself was hit by a ricochet from a bullet that was only about 3 feet from me. The bullet hit a log head on and bounced off striking me and did not even leave that big a welt on me. It did not even penetrate the skin and yes it was a .22 bullet.
And I might add that I owned and experimented with the exploder bullets when they were still legal to own. All failed to explode unless they hit something very solid like wood or metal or bone. Since the bullet was recovered from Reagan "intact" and not in fragments the bullet never hit the metal in the car.