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Man With Gun Shot Outside White House in US Capital
Man With Gun Shot Outside White House in US Capital
A middle-aged man fired several shots and waved a handgun at the White House in the US capital of Washington Wednesday before a Secret Service officer shot and wounded him. The episode triggered a tight midday security clampdown.
President George W. Bush was exercising inside the White House and was never in any danger as the incident unfolded just outside the fence lining the White House South Lawn. Bush had been on the South Lawn about an hour and a half before the incident.
The wounded man was Robert Pickett, a 47-year-old accountant who lived by himself in Evansville, Indiana State. Evansville police said Pickett did not have a criminal record. They said his father had filed a missing-person report on his son in 1993, but it was suspended when the son returned.
Pickett was taken to nearby George Washington University Hospital where he was to undergo knee surgery and psychological evaluation. He was in stable condition.
The episode began when police heard shots and approached a man with a handgun on the sidewalk outside the fence on the south side of the White House, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said at a press conference.
Fleischer said officers on regular patrol "heard shots fired and proceeded to surround the subject."
"A 10-minute standoff ensued upon which time the Secret Service fired a shot into the suspect's leg," Fleischer said, adding that the wound did not appear to be life threatening.
Meanwhile, US Secret Service spokesman Marc Connolly said an officer fired one shot, which struck the gunman in the right knee, and no shots were fired by the man. However, law enforcement officers were investigating whether the man fired shots before police approached him.
The gunman "was brandishing the firearm. He was waving it in the air. The weapon was pointed at the White House at one point, and pointed in all directions," said Park Police spokesman Rob MacLean.
A phalanx of police officers surged to the scene. Officers tried to persuade him into putting the weapon down. Pickett at one point put the gun inside his mouth and also crouched on the sidewalk, MacLean said.
After unsuccessfully trying to talk the man into putting down his weapon, the Secret Service said one of its uniformed officers fired a single shot through the fence that brought the man down.
Other officers rushed in to make sure he was subdued.
Wednesday's incident triggered a massive security alert at the White House in the center of Washington, with armed officers spreading out across the fenced grounds and a helicopter hovering overhead.
The White House is one of the most security-conscious buildings in the country with hundreds of agents assigned to protect the president and his family from harm.
It was the latest violent incident at the White House in recent years and comes as Bush considers whether to reopen the stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue on the north front of the mansion. It was closed in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing laid bare the possibility of a similar incident in Washington.
In May 1995, the Secret Service shot a man who scaled a White House fence, carrying an unloaded gun. At that time, the man had asked to see President Bill Clinton.
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