Man Opens Fire in Fla. Courthouse, is Killed By Sheriff's Deputies
An unidentified man brought a semiautomatic weapon into a St. Petersburg, Fla., courthouse lobby today and opened fire before being shot and killed by two Pinellas County sheriff’s deputies.
One deputy was wounded when a bullet hit his radio microphone and grazed his shoulder, Jim Bordner, a sheriff’s department spokesman, told the St. Petersburg Times. The assailant had at least one additional magazine for his handgun. The backpack he brought into the courthouse lobby hasn’t yet been completely searched.
“Luck and good training were on their side,” Bordner says of the two deputies, B.J. Lyons, 58, and Marvin Glover, 57. Lyons was the one who sustained the injury.
“Sheriff’s officials said they could not immediately remember another time when a bailiff fired a weapon in the line of duty,” the newspaper reports.
The incident is one of several reported violent episodes at courthouses around the country in recent months. As discussed in earlier ABAJournal.com posts, they include: a bomb exploding outside of a San Diego courthouse on Sunday; an incarcerated defendant’s razor-blade attack on a federal prosecutor in a Brooklyn courtroom in March, and a knife-wielding mentally ill man’s run into a courtroom in central California last week.
The downtown St. Petersburg courthouse was closed for the rest of the day today, after the shooting, but it is expected to be open again tomorrow.
