From WSB-TV.com:

Judge Fatally Shot, Three Wounded
Massive Search Underway for Gunman
POSTED: 9:29 am EST March 11, 2005
UPDATED: 10:30 am EST March 11, 2005

ATLANTA -- A Fulton County judge was fatally wounded and three others were shot Friday at the Fulton courthouse before the suspect fled from the scene and carjacked a newspaper reporter.

Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes was pronounced dead after he was transported to Grady Memorial Hospital for treatment.

Police were conducting a massive search for the suspect, who fled in a vehicle described as a gray Mercury Sable or a green Honda Accord. Authorities identified him as Brian Nichols, 34.

The other victims, said to be a court reporter and two sheriff's deputies, were also rushed to Grady, but their conditions were not immediately available.

A reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was also injured during the incident. Authorities said the reporter, identified as Don O'Briant was pistol-whipped and assaulted while the suspect was trying to get away.

The AJC reporter was taken to the hospital but his condition was not immediately available.

The assailant was described as a tall black male with a bald head. Authorities said the suspect grabbed a gun from the deputy inside the courthouse before opening fire. The incident occurred shortly after 9 a.m. at the courthouse, located in downtown Atlanta.

The suspect then fled to a nearby parking garage and attempted to carjack two people. The assailant managed to get the vehicle from a third victim before leaving the area.

Police have shut down several streets in the area while they looked for the suspect.

An attorney who witnessed this morning's shooting told Channel 2 Action News that Barnes was hearing a rape case at the time of the shooting.

The rape trial had ended in a mistrial last week. It was not immediately clear if Nichols was involved in the case.

Renee Rockwall said she was outside the courthouse when the incident happened. She said she saw a deputy chasing the suspect when the gunman turned and opened fire, wounding the deputy.



wsbtv.com Staff Writer Alfred Charles and Channel 2 Action News reporters Ross Cavitt, Alan Wang and Dale Cardwell contributed to this report.



Copyright 2005 by WSBTV.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

In many places that deputy who lost is gun would be fired.
I hope everyone else comes through this ok.

From C.N.N.:

3 killed in courthouse shooting
Judge, court reporter, deputy dead; defendant sought
Friday, March 11, 2005 Posted: 11:26 AM EST (1626 GMT)

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A Fulton County Superior Court judge, a sheriff's deputy and a court reporter were killed and another deputy was wounded Friday when a defendant grabbed a gun from a deputy sheriff and opened fire at the downtown Atlanta courthouse, officials said.

The first shootings occurred about 9 a.m. in Judge Rowland W. Barnes' eighth-floor courtroom. Barnes was dead at the scene, Judge Gary Spencer told CNN Radio. A court reporter was also killed and a deputy wounded.

Witnesses reported more gunfire outside the courthouse. One witness told CNN that another sheriff's deputy was seen lying on the ground outside the Atlanta courthouse.

Renee Rockwell, a defense attorney, said she was on her way to the courtroom immediately following the shooting, when a deputy grabbed her and pulled her into an elevator. "While we were in the elevator, one of the female deputies started crying and said, 'The defendant took the deputy's gun and held the courtroom hostage and shot the judge.'

All four victims were transported to Grady Memorial Hospital, said Sgt. Clarence Huber of the Fulton County Sheriff's Department. A search for the suspect, identified by police as Brian Nichols, 34, was under way.

"We do have a search for the suspect ... and the suspect is at large right now," Huber said.

Nichols is believed to have to attempted to carjack several vehicles.

Warning signs on Atlanta freeways told motorists to be on the look out for a green Honda Accord with Georgia license plates. Televised reports said the Honda was taken from a newspaper reporter, who has beaten by the suspect.

Nichols was reportedly facing a retrial for rape and kidnapping in Barnes' courtroom, after a first trial resulted in a hung jury. He is described as being an African-American male, 34 years old, about 6 feet, 1 inch tall and weighing 210 pounds.

Barnes was "extremely highly thought of in the legal community," attorney B.J. Bernstein told CNN. The judge presided over both civil and criminal cases.

"The only thing I can imagine is that someone would have had to have moved very quickly and suddenly to catch one of the deputies off guard in order to remove his weapon," she said.

Police believe Nichols carjacked at least one vehicle to flee from the area after the shootings.

A witness told CNN the suspect took his tow truck at gunpoint outside the courthouse and fled the scene.

The gunman "told me to get out of the truck. I told him he can have the truck. And I walked away," Deronte Franklin said.

There were reports of other carjackings outside the courthouse.

Police and emergency vehicles surrounded the courthouse, and those inside said they were locked in courtrooms and offices.

More than 30 schools around Atlanta were locked down, Atlanta Public Schools spokesman Joe Manguno said.

Vickie Warner, a courthouse employee, said she heard "three or four shots and we looked out ... and we saw this guy running across the street, with a gun in his hand, into the underground parking deck."

"It's just really chaotic right now," Warner said.

CNN's Ninette Sosa contributed to this report.

He just had to make it worse. Like he was not in enough trouble. I wonder how the one or ones who hung the jury feel now.

This happens to much



(AP) -- Authorities are investigating, among other leads, whether the shooting deaths of a federal judge's husband and her mother were the work of white supremacists out for revenge.

While attacks on families of judges are rare, several judges themselves have been targeted.

A look at some of those cases:
1999

Los Angeles County Court Commissioner H. George Taylor was killed after being struck by three shotgun blasts as he entered his home's driveway. His wife Lynda was shot and killed when she rushed outside to investigate. No arrests were made, but detectives are convinced that the slayings were connected to Taylor's work in court.
1989

Federal judge Robert Vance was killed when he opened a bomb-laden package in his home outside Birmingham, Ala. His wife was severely injured but survived. Walter Leroy Moody Jr. was convicted and sentenced to die. Moody sent mail bombs to Vance and to a black civil rights lawyer, Robert Robinson, because he was angry that a 1972 conviction for possessing a pipe bomb had not been overturned.
1988

Federal judge Richard J. Daronco was killed at his Pelham, New York, home by Charles L. Koster, a retired New York City police officer apparently seeking revenge for the judge's dismissal of a $2.5 million lawsuit filed by his daughter. Koster then shot and killed himself.
1987

Mississippi judge Vincent Sherry and his wife Margaret, a former Biloxi city councilwoman and mayoral contender, were murdered in their home. Later convicted as part of a racketeering organization that arranged for their contract murders were a former mayor of Biloxi, Pete Halat, and three other people. Prosecutors alleged the killings were ordered over missing profits from a prison scam that had been kept in the law office Halat and Sherry once shared.
1987

Mobster Joel Cacace hired a trio of hitmen to kill federal prosecutor William Aronwald for disrespecting the Columbo crime family. By mistake they tailed Aronwald's father, George, a 78-year-old city administrative law judge who shared an office with his son, and shot him dead as he stopped to pick up his laundry.
1983

Illinois Judge Henry Gentile was shot to death in his courtroom by a disgruntled man whose divorce case was being heard by Gentile. Also slain was lawyer James Piszczor. Hutchie Moore was convicted of murder in the shootings.
1979

U.S. District Judge John Wood was slain by a sniper outside his home in San Antonio. The killer was hired because defendants in a Colombian drug-smuggling case before the judge believed he would impose a maximum sentence on them. Charles Harrelson, the father of actor Woody Harrelson, was convicted and sentenced to two life terms in the first assassination of a federal judge in the 20th century.
1974

Washington state Superior Court Judge James Lawless was killed when he opened a brown package. Ricky Anthony Young was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Lawless had been scheduled to sentence Young in an arson case, and sometime earlier had sent him to jail in the burglary of a drug store.

Yes this does happen to much. And there are to many that deserve it.

There is really no new news. They still haven't found the guy. The police are looking for a green Honda Accord with a Georgia license plate 6584YN.

From C.N.N.:

Courthouse killings suspect in custody
Saturday, March 12, 2005 Posted: 11:56 AM EST (1656 GMT)

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Brian Nichols, the suspect in the shootings of three people at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, is in police custody, according to Police Chief Richard Pennington.

Nichols was arrested Saturday at the apartment complex that police had surrounded in Gwinnett County, north of Atlanta. A blue pickup truck matching the description of that belonging to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who was found slain was discovered at the complex.

A massive manhunt had been under way to find Nichols, who police say shot and killed Judge Rowland W. Barnes, court reporter Julie Ann Brandau and deputy sheriff Hoyt Teasley in the courthouse in downtown Atlanta on Friday.

A Department of Homeland Security official in Washington Saturday said the off-duty U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officer who was shot and killed was David Wilhelm, an assistant special agent in charge of ICE's Atlanta field office. Authorities had been looking for his 1994 blue Chevrolet pickup.

Surveillance camera snaps suspect

Security camera images from inside a parking garage had given investigators a major lead in the hunt for Nichols. The surveillance images did not show how Nichols made his getaway.

The nationwide manhunt for Nichols shifted focus late Friday with the discovery that the 1997 Honda Accord police had earlier thought was used for the getaway, was still in the garage where he carjacked it from a newspaper reporter after the courthouse shootings.

The garage's lower level exit gate, used only by parkers with monthly passes, was broken and detectives told CNN they believe Nichols crashed through it after taking another car on that level.

But they have not ruled out the possibility that he may have walked out of the garage.

A series of photos taken by two stairwell cameras show a shirtless Nichols putting on a jacket apparently taken from the reporter as he walked to a lower level and disappeared.

No camera was in position to capture what happened when Nichols exited the stairwell.

GBI Director Keenan said Nichols may have taken another vehicle, and its owner as hostage, soon after abandoning the Honda.

"That is of concern to us," Keenan said. "We know that in the previous carjacking he had ordered the driver of the vehicle to get in the automobile that he was carjacking. We are very concerned that is a possibility that has happened."

There have been no missing person reports, Keenan said.

"We do not know what type of vehicle he is now operating," Keenan said. "We do not know how he left from here."

Keenan described the manhunt for Nichols as the largest in Georgia's history.

But it was a private citizen who realized Friday night the 1997 Honda they were looking for was still in the Centennial garage, just blocks from the courthouse where the shootings occurred.

That garage was where a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said the Honda was taken from him following the shootings.

The shootings occurred about 9 a.m., as Nichols was being led into an eighth-floor courtroom, Dreher said.

Nichols was being retried on rape, false imprisonment and other charges after a first trial last week ended in a hung jury. The second trial began Monday.

Nichols apparently overpowered a deputy in an elevator on their way to the courtroom, police said.

Jeffrey Salamone, attending trauma surgeon at Grady Memorial Hospital, said the deputy escorting Nichols suffered a graze wound from a gunshot.

Salamone said Cynthia Hall has a small bruise on her brain and some fractures around her face. She was in critical condition, but was expected to survive.

Once inside the courtroom, police said, Nichols held people in the room at bay briefly, then shot Judge Barnes and Brandau -- both of whom died at the scene.

Nichols then fled the building, where outside he shot Sgt. Teasley in the abdomen, officials said. The sheriff's deputy was pronounced dead at the hospital, Salamone said.

Deronta Franklin told CNN that Nichols took his tow truck at gunpoint near the courthouse.

The gunman "told me to get out of the truck. I told him he can have the truck. And I walked away," Franklin said.

Courthouse security

Some said the shooting was predictable given the security lapses at the courthouse.

"The security in the Fulton County Courthouse, the way they deal with prisoners, is absolutely atrocious," attorney Dennis Scheib told CNN. "I said this was going to happen."

Scheib said deputies outside the courthouse told him that a knife-like weapon was discovered in Nichols' boot last week.

Fulton County State Court Judge Craig Schwall, however, described security at the courthouse as "phenomenal." Judges have their own private elevator, accessible only by key card, he said. Their chambers are heavily secured, he said, and they and other court officials have their own secure parking garage.

"I think that, as public servants, we all have to be mindful of these risks," Schwall said.

"The only thing I can imagine is that someone would have had to have moved very quickly and suddenly to catch one of the deputies off guard in order to remove his weapon," said attorney B. J. Bernstein.

Well-respected judge

Bernstein told CNN that Judge Barnes, who presided over civil and criminal cases, was "extremely highly thought of in the legal community."

Last month, Barnes made headlines when he ordered a 34-year-old woman, who had seven children and pleaded guilty to killing the eighth, a newborn, to undergo sterilization.

He was a vocal advocate of Fulton County's supervised rehabilitation clinics, an alternative for jail for repeat offenders with drug addictions. Barnes touted the program for its cost-effectiveness.

A juror in Nichols' trial told CNN that Barnes was kind, and said Nichols always seemed to be respectful to him.



CNN's Steve Brusk, Ninette Sosa and Randi Kaye contributed to this report.

I hope he does not get another "hung jury".

Maybe the judge was a poopie head. :P