Queen Elizabeth survived secret assassination attempt by teen in 1981
A psychopathic teenager apparently attempted to assassinate Queen Elizabeth while she visited New Zealand back in 1981.
Newly released declassified documents say that 17-year-old Christopher Lewis fired a rifle round at the Queen’s car when she was visiting Dunedin on the South Island of New Zealand, according to papers from the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service.
No one was harmed in the incident, but the papers suggest that because police feared the attempted murder would jeopardize future royal visits, they covered it up.
Police told the public that that the sound of Lewis’s gunshot was a sign falling over.
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Lewis was arrested for the incident but was never officially charged with an assassination attempt on the Queen. He was later convicted for a string of other crimes and was in jail until he committed suicide in 1997.
He "did indeed originally intense to assassinate the Queen," the documents show. "However [he] did not have a suitable vantage point from which to fire, nor a sufficiently high-powered rifle for the range from the target."
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