United States Capitol Shooting Incident (1954) - Aftermath and Arrests

Aftermath and Arrests

Five representatives were shot in the attack. The wounded lawmakers were Alvin M. Bentley (R-Michigan), who took a bullet to the chest, Clifford Davis (D-Tennessee), who was shot in the leg, Ben F. Jensen (R-Iowa), who was shot in the back, as well as George Hyde Fallon (D-Maryland) and Kenneth A. Roberts (D-Alabama). House pages helped carry Alvin Bentley off the House floor. Future congressmen Bill Emerson and Paul E. Kanjorski were two of the congressional pages who were serving on the floor during the incident.

The Nationalists were immediately arrested in Washington, D.C. The next morning, back in Puerto Rico, the Insular Police attacked the home of Pedro Albizu Campos with guns and tear gas. Under the command of the Chief of Police of Puerto Rico, Salvador T. Roig, they fired into Campos's home from the roof of a Pentecostal Church and from a boarding house which faced Campos's home. After several hours of shooting they arrested Campos and dragged him off to prison, unconscious and half-asphyxiated.

Police Chief Roig later admitted that the order to arrest Albizu Campos "did not make any sense," since Albizu Campos's phones were all tapped, his mail was being intercepted, and Campos himself was under 24-hour surveillance by the FBI, the CIA and the Insular Police. This surveillance was so intense, that the FBI reports on Pedro Albizu Campos and the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party ultimately exceeded over one million pages in length. Through all this round-the-clock scrutiny, there had been no indication, that Campos was in any way connected with the attack on U.S. congress.

No proof was ever found or submitted, that Albizu Campos had ordered or encouraged the attack on the U.S. Congress. Nonetheless the Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín, revoked the pardon which had been granted to the Nationalist party leader, and Campos was returned to La Princesa prison, from which he had been released only six months before. He was accused of sedition, violation of Law 53 (otherwise known as the "Gag Law") and the attempted violent overthrow of the U.S. government.

Two years later, on March 25, 1956, Campos suffered an embolism and a cerebral thrombosis while in prison, which rendered him semi-paralytic and mute. However, he was not released from U.S. federal custody for another nine years, shortly before his death, which occurred on April 21, 1965.