FILE – In this June 5, 1968 file photo, Hotel busboy Juan Romero, right, comes to the aid of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, as he lies on the floor of the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles moments after he was shot. The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018, that Romero died Monday in Modesto, California, at age 68. Romero was a teenage busboy in June 1968 when Kennedy walked through the Ambassador Hotel kitchen after his victory in the California presidential primary and an assassin shot him in the head. He held the mortally wounded Kennedy as he lay on the ground, struggling to keep the senator’s bleeding head from hitting the floor. (Richard Drew/Pasadena Star News via AP)
LOS ANGELES (AP) – When Robert F. Kennedy decided to duck through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after declaring victory in the 1968 Democratic presidential primary, Juan Romero reveled at his good fortune.
It meant the 18-year-old busboy might get to shake hands with his hero – the man he’d assured himself would be the next president of the United States – for the second time in two days.
Romero had just grasped Kennedy’s hand when gunshots rang out, one of them striking the senator in the head.
Kennedy would die the next day and the teenage Mexican immigrant who had idolized him would carry the emotional burden of that encounter for most of his life.
“I remember him one time saying he felt guilty,” his daughter, Josefina Guerra, said Thursday. “He thought it was his fault.”