Police shoot armed man in courtroom www.privateofficer.com

Police shoot armed man in courtroom http://www.privateofficer.com

MERCED, Calif. April 30 2008

Kyle T. Greene

Ntl. Assoc. Private Officers

www.privateofficer.com – Sheriff’s officials said the knife-wielding suspect who was shot and killed at the Merced County Courthouse was the same person who rammed his car into the building a year ago.
The suspect was identified by authorities as 40-year-old Robert Eaton.
Sheriff’s deputies fatally shot Eaton on Monday afternoon after he went into the courthouse brandishing two butcher knives.
No one else was injured in the incident.
Sheriff Mark Pazin said Eaton also crashed into the courthouse in April 2007, claiming he was angry that he had been refused treatment by a local mental health facility.
Pazin said Eaton had an extensive arrest record and had been under mental health treatment with the county.
Guards tried to stop the man after he ran through a set of metal detectors at the Merced County Courthouse, but they couldn’t catch up to him once he took off down a crowded hallway holding a knife in each hand, Chief Deputy District Attorney Harold Nutt said.
According to Nutt, attorneys and witnesses yelled as Eaton approached Courtroom 2, but he busted through a set of doors, where lawyers were standing in the midst of court proceeding, Nutt said.
“As soon as he hit the inside doors I was behind him and I started yelling that he had a knife,” said Nutt, who saw him approach as he stood in the hallway talking with a colleague. “The officers started yelling at him, and yelling at everybody else to get down, and at that point it was rather chaotic. People started screaming, people started heading for the door, and I just ran back outside.”
“As the judge tried to hurry his court clerks out the back through his chambers, the man held the knives aloft, in a stabbing position,” Nutt said.
Merced County Sheriff Mark Pazin said the man charged Judge Brian McCabe.
When the suspect refused to drop the weapons, three officers fired directly at him, and the man died on the courtroom floor, in front of several dozen attorneys, law enforcement officers and others doing business in the court, Merced County sheriff’s spokesman Tom MacKenzie said.
According to authorities, the man was shot multiple times.
No other injuries were immediately reported, but the courthouse remained on lockdown as investigators interviewed witnesses and officers involved in the incident, MacKenzie said.
Nutt said a public defender told him he recognized the suspect as a previous client with a history of mental illness.
“Our first order of business is to protect the judge and the court personnel,” Pazin said.

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