the shooter and his wife. Two others injured.

Were there no good guys with guns?

Court houses are gun free zones ya know.

The sheriff deputies all have weapons...Guns & Tazers.

In Franklin County OH the Courthouse building is loaded w/
men and women cops, deputies, and state cops who carry
guns.

Not all courts are equal in how secure they are. Some are fairly strict--metal detectors and armed bailiffs at the doors--and others are fairly laid back. A great deal seems to depend on where they are and how much of an issue they've had over the years.

Our local courthouse is fairly strict, but that didn't really come into play until a few years ago when we had a guy walk into a courtroom and throw a Molotov cocktail at the judge. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured, but it certainly did give a huge wake up call to the powers that be. Court security cracked down almost immediately after that incident, and today you go through metal detectors and a fairly extensive screening. (Frankly speaking, I think safety is an illusion--even there--because if you have some batshit crazy guy who wants only to kill a maximum number of people the shooting will start at the metal detector and just continue on through the building.)

Other counties I've been to have zero to minimal security. It might be that they have only one door that allows access and you walk in past a guy who's due to retire in a few months, others are literally, nothing. NADA. Usually, they have been the rural--read as smaller--counties, but even so, I'd think that given the high stress level that courthouses carry there would be some kind of attention paid to safety.

Anyhow, does anybody know what kind of courthouse this was?



Laura

If only they had somebody @ the court house w/ a gun ..... oh never mind one of the people who was shot was a cop.

Damn - they really get around.

lmao

Apparently he stepped right inside the door and fired at people in line going through metal detectors.

That is why I asked about security upthread. I was just in our local courthouse here in Illinois on Friday, and as I was going through the security screening I wondered about this very subject. Because of what I do, and how long I've been doing it, I know a fair number of the guys that do the security screening at our local courthouse (In fact, I was joking Friday with one bailiff--I've known him for several years and we share a love of BBQ...) I've wondered how safe they really are when they are at work.

When you walk in our local courthouse you are immediately in the screening line. You have to pass through a metal detector to enter the main building. If it beeps, you get screened with a wand or visually inspected. I have government IDs that let me pass in and out without a lot of stress, but the average guy/gal walking in there is gonna get fairly well screened on the way in.

They x-ray bags and anything that will fit on a belt, but some wing nut hell bent on hurting people could very easily start shooting as soon as that alarm sounds, and I doubt seriously that the two guards could react fast enough to stop anything too bad. It is scary when you stop to think about it. I know we are set up like a lot of other places, and that is why I wondered when I saw this thread. Seems to me that they almost need to use some kind of bullet proof glass to enclose the security guards.

Given the tensions that emerge in most courtroom settings, I've wondered over the years why there isn't better security in those places. It is a workplace safety issue along with being a matter of public safety.



Laura

By Steven Church - Feb 11, 2013

A shooting at a Delaware courthouse in Wilmington, home to the state’s Chancery Court, resulted in the deaths of at least three people, including the gunman, in a confrontation police and court officials said stemmed from a custody dispute.

Five people were shot in the incident, state police Sergeant Paul G. Shavack said today in an interview. Police said it was unclear whether the two victims, both women, were shot by the assailant, a man, or by police. One of the women, the wife of the assailant according to the Associated Press, was there to attend a custody hearing, court official David Grimaldi said.

The shooter walked into the courthouse lobby and was confronted by police, sparking the exchange of gunfire, police said. The incident stemmed from a domestic dispute involving the gunman and his wife, said a person with direct knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified.

MORE...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2013-02-11/delaware-courthouse-shooting-results-in-at-least-two-people-dead.html

K& R

From the link. The armed police may have shot the innocent bystanders by accident, in the crossfire.

How's that arming everybody working out?

If everyone had a gun, the cross fine would unintentionally hit most everyone. IMHO.

More on the story here:

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/five-shot-three-reported-dead-wilmi-0

One of the women killed in this morning’s courthouse shooting was Christine Belford, a 39-year-old woman who was involved in a bitter custody dispute with her ex-husband, law enforcement and legal sources said.

Belford was at the center of a court fight with her ex-husband, David T. Matusiewicz, who kidnapped his three young daughters in August 2007 and took them on an 18-month odyssey to Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico and Nicaragua. In March 2009, authorities discovered Matusiewicz, his mother Lenore and the girls – then ages ages, 4, 6, and 7, one of whom is autistic -- living in a dirty and cramped trailer.

Law enforcement and legal sources initially told The News Journal that Matusiewicz was the shooter and was killed this morning. But those sources now say he was not the gunman, and they identified his father, Thomas Matusiewicz, as the shooter who was killed.

Matusiewicz, a former optometrist, spent time in federal prison for the kidnapping and bank fraud. He received a four-year sentence for forging Belford’s name to get a $249,000 home equity loan from Wilmington Saving Fund Society on their Middletown?area home.

While in prison he continued trying to get joint custody and have visits with the girls, but his parental rights were terminated. He served his time in the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center and the federal prison in Bastrop, Texas, and was released in April 2012 to a halfway house in Bastrop, prison officials said. About two months later, Matusiewicz was released from the halfway house into home confinement for a period that ended Sept. 5.

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20130211/NEWS/130211006/Sources-Shooter-was-father-of-ex-optometrist-who-kidnapped-kids

For real, I wish people would just treat each other, and themselves, decently.

condensed version.