![]() The articles you choose to read on Hivisasa help shape the content we offer. Thank you for reading my article! You have contributed to my success as a writer. "However, because of sentimental attachment, he demanded that Thungu not only remain behind but be the “head bodyguard” to be riding in the presidential limousine," Hinga told Nation's Kamau Ngotho earlier in the year. However, he ensured that Thungu remained behind and even ordered that he be given a police tittle, despite having never been a police officer. When the founding father was finally convinced to let go of his VIP guards, the team that came with Thungu, Kenyatta indeed did it. Hinga said that Thungu also shot dead a relative of a worker at one of Kenyatta's farms simply because 'he had never seen that face before'. Him not being a policeman, however, made him a rogue man who did not hesitate to use his gun, and on one incident shot dead a patron at a Gatundu bar after an argument over a prostitute. However, he rose to become the Head Presidential Bodyguard who even rode in the presidential limousine and was at times sneaked to Czechoslovakia for gun handling courses. However, as would later be revealed by Post Independence Police Commissioner Bernard Hinga, Thungu did not even know how to use a gun during his appointment, having been just a civilian. Thungu, a native of Gatundu, took over from Alex Pierson who Kenyatta inherited from the colonial police, and Kenyatta proceeded to push for his training in Israel and Britain. Shortly after midnight on September 25, eyewitnesses reported seeing a presidential bodyguard ask 43-year-old Poghosian to step with him into the restroom of the caf. Mzee Kenyatta picked Thungu as his bodyguard after independence. This saw Kenyatta develop a liking for him as a result of his readiness to do anything to protect his bosses. The history between the two began after Kenyatta's return from Britain in the 1940s when Thungu was a youth-winger in the KAU party, his job being escorting and protecting leaders. 73-74.ADVERTISEMENT Do you have a lead on a newsworthy story? Share news tips with us here at Hivisasa! Margarita Spalding Gerry, editor, Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H.Emerson Reck, Abraham Lincoln: His Last 24 Hours, pp. James McPherson, Battle Chronicles of the Civil War, 1865, p.Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Volume IV, p.Lincoln never knew that the guard had left his post.” 4 The door of the President’s box was shut probably Mr. If he did, he left it almost immediately for he confessed to me the next day that he went to a seat at the front of the first gallery, so that he could see the play. Buckingham is of the impression that he did. Whether Parker occupied it at all I do not know-Mr. Buckingham, who was the doorkeeper at Ford’s Theatre, remembers that a chair was placed there for the guard on the evening of the 14th. “It was the custom for the guard who accompanied the President to the theatre to remain in the little passageway outside the box-that passageway through which Booth entered. Had Parker “done his duty, I believe President Lincoln would not have been murdered by Booth,” wrote Crook. He looked like a convicted criminal the next day. And then to think that in that moment of test one of us should have failed him! Parker knew that he had failed in his duty. It makes me feel rather bitter when I remember that the President had said, just a few hours before, that he knew he could trust all his guards. Fellow bodyguard William Crook reported: “Had he found a man at the door of the of the President’s box armed with a Colt’s revolver, his alcohol courage might have evaporated. Parker, a member of the Metropolitan Police Force, has been detailed for duty at the Executive Mansion.” 2 His desertion of his post outside the Presidential box and neglect of duty at Ford’s Theater led to charges against him, which were subsequently dropped. Nobody-at-All – a player of a negation.” 1Īn order was sent to the Metropolitan Police Force on April 3 at the request of Mrs. Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg described Parker as “the drab, well-meaning, lackadaisical, muddle-headed wanderer” who played “the part of a stranger cipher – a weird and elusive Mr. He once explained a week he spent in a house of prostitution by saying he had been protecting the establishment. ![]() As a Washington policeman, he had compiled a record of misconduct and 14 disciplinary infractions that made him a curious choice for the White House detail. He was a carpenter and machinist before serving briefly in the Army at the beginning of the Civil War. John Parker was the Presidential bodyguard who arrived late to work on the night of Apand left to go to Ford’s Theater after the President.
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