Florida Man Charged With Killing Two : Crime: One victim is four months pregnant; a third person is wounded before pistol jams. The 68-year-old suspect was involved in a lawsuit.

A man involved in a lawsuit opened fire in a court reporter’s office Friday, killing a pregnant lawyer and a man giving a deposition before the 15-shot pistol jammed, police said.

The shooting suspect was identified as Julio Mora. He was chased down and held for authorities by the owner of the court-reporting firm where the shooting occurred.

Mora, whose 68th birthday was Friday, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder for wounding a third person.

State law also allows murder charges to be filed in the death of a fetus, but prosecutors had not decided whether to do that, a police spokeswoman said.

Police identified the victims as lawyer Karen Marx, 30, of West Palm Beach, who was four months pregnant, and Clarence Rudolph, 56.

Maurice Hall, 44, a lawyer and retired judge from West Palm Beach, was wounded in the abdomen. He was listed in critical condition after surgery at Broward General Hospital.

The shooting occurred in a sixth-floor office where Rudolph was giving a deposition in a civil case that involved Mora, authorities said. Also in the office were the two lawyers--Marx and Hall--and a court reporter.

“Fifteen minutes into the deposition the gentleman pulled out a gun,” said Bret Tannenbaum, owner of Coastal Reporting Services. “He fired six shots, two into each person. The gentleman’s gun jammed. He ran out.

“This was a pre-planned thing,” Tannenbaum said. “(Mora) said some pretty weird things yesterday.”

He refused to elaborate.

Mora had filed a lawsuit against the American Assn. of Retired Persons over a senior job placement program. He was acting as his own lawyer and had scheduled the deposition, police spokeswoman Sonya Friedman said.

She said Mora had been laid off from the association about a year ago. Rudolph ran the program at the time of Mora’s employment.

Tannenbaum said he heard six shots and went after the gunman, thinking the gun was empty. “The police told me later that the seventh shot had jammed and it was a 15-round automatic,” he said.

Tannenbaum said that Mora, who limps and uses a cane, tried to make it to an elevator. But he said he chased Mora, knocked him down and held him.

In the same building, divorce lawyer Eric Golden was shot to death on Feb. 19, 1987, as he stepped off an elevator outside his sixth-floor office. A retiree was charged with killing Golden, who represented the man’s ex-wife.