In 1963, McDonald was a police officer in Dallas, Texas. On November 22, President John F. Kennedy was shot near where McDonald was, and he responded to a report of a suspicious man at a movie theater. The man was pointed out to McDonald, who went in to confront him. It was Lee Harvey Oswald, who had just shot Kennedy.
“He made a fist and bam, hit me right between the eyes,” McDonald said in his memoir, The Arrest and Capture of Lee Harvey Oswald (reissued after his death as Oswald and I *). “I came back and hit him.” Then Oswald pulled a gun as McDonald wrestled with him. “I could feel the hammer glide under my hand as he pulled the trigger,” McDonald recalled. “I stood rigid, waiting for the bullet to penetrate my chest.” But his instinct saved him: “The returning hammer made a dull, audible snapping sound as the firing pin struck the flesh of my left hand, between the thumb and forefinger.”
He was able to pin Oswald until other officers could help take him into custody. “It feels good that I got the guy who got the president, really,” he once said. His wife Rose said he believed Oswald acted alone that day. “He was not into conspiracies at all,” she says. “He knew too much about the case.” During his 25-year career with the department, he received 26 commendations. McDonald died January 27 from diabetes. He was 76.