Hero Finds Himself in Spotlight

David Katz’s day at the Van Nuys courthouse started like any other Friday. The Traffic Court judge spent the morning hearing cases, as he always does. After clearing his calendar a little after 10, he headed toward the parking lot to leave.

But as he neared his car, he heard shots. The next few minutes would force change on his routine and thrust him into the media klieg lights-- at least temporarily.

A short distance away, a shoving match had quickly escalated. A Thousand Oaks man began firing at an attorney outside the courthouse, and then chased the attorney around a tree.

Katz, 40, ran back toward the building and tackled the shooter, wrestling him to the pavement and confiscating two guns. The tussle was captured by news crews, there to cover the Robert Blake murder case, and was broadcast nationwide.

Katz -- a judge, corporate attorney and reserve deputy for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department -- became an insta-hero.

He attributed his almost-mechanical reaction to years of training as a reserve deputy. Also, “I might not have done what I did, had I seen the shooting. I might have been as frozen as everyone else.”

On Saturday, police said they had no new information about why William Strier, 64, had shot Gerald E. Curry, 53, of Simi Valley. The two men had been scheduled to appear in a contentious probate case in Los Angeles County Superior Court shortly after the time of the shooting.

Nor was there any further information on Curry, who was listed in stable condition Friday at a local hospital.

Instead of going home, Katz spent the rest of Friday giving first-person accounts of the incident to a variety of TV outlets, including CNN, MSNBC and Fox.

And then he took a step toward Hollywood. After ABC talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel showed the footage on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” a camera panned his studio audience Friday night, and there was Katz sitting in the front row, taking in the audience’s applause -- and wearing a ghost costume that the show’s producers had asked him to wear for Halloween. It was, he admitted, a bizarre moment.

“I’m like, get me out of this place,” he said in an interview Saturday.

Katz had stayed up until almost 5 a.m., doing interviews on most major network newscasts. He was up at 7 to do the morning shows. While getting ready for a previously planned party at his home Saturday, he was prepping to chat with Geraldo Rivera on Fox News Channel. And on Monday morning, he plans to start the week by recounting Friday’s scuffle to “Katie Couric and Matt Lauer on NBC’s “The Today Show.”

“They wanted me to go to New York,” Katz said. “But I said I can’t. It’s not like flying to New York for a day is any fun.”

Katz’s story goes like this: After leaving the courthouse, he was in the middle of the street, when he heard what he thought might have been two shots. His first thought was that a television crew’s camera light might have overheated and exploded.

“I thought, that can’t be shots -- there’s too much media around,” he said. “Then I heard four or five more shots. I took cover behind a concrete wall.”

He had no idea, he said, that Strier was engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with Curry, as the gunman tried repeatedly to reach around a tree to fire at the lawyer before putting his pistol back in his pocket and walking away.

Since then, as Katz has run the media gantlet, he has watched the footage of the shooting and his capture of the suspect over and over. “It’s pretty shocking,” he said. “It’s a stomach-turning event.”

Katz said that he decided to act after people came running toward him, telling him (mistakenly) that a deputy had been shot.

“I came around the corner,” Katz said. “It was kind of pandemonium. Some people started pointing at the victim. I started heading in that direction. The suspect was coming toward me.”

Katz said he had walked past Strier, and then turned toward the man, taken off his jacket and dropped his valise. “I only had one choice,” he said. “I didn’t know who he had shot, why he had shot. I just thought, he could shoot somebody else. I thought it was best to take him down.”

Katz jumped Strier from behind, got him in a headlock and quickly dropped him to the pavement. Katz described the whole experience as “a very surreal circumstance. I’m glad I was able to help,” he added.