Man Fires Gun Outside White House, Is Shot

Secret Service officers on Wednesday shot and wounded a man who had fired a handgun outside the south fence of the White House. President Bush, who was inside the Executive Mansion at the time, was never in danger.

The incident occurred shortly before noon EST and triggered a temporary security clampdown--keeping visitors from entering or leaving the White House and snarling traffic for blocks. It came at the same time officials are studying plans to reopen Pennsylvania Avenue north of the White House. That portion of the street has been closed to vehicles since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

The gunman was identified as Robert W. Pickett, 47, a tax accountant who lives alone in Evansville, Ind., and has no known police record. He was treated for a leg wound at George Washington University Hospital several blocks from the White House and also underwent a psychological examination. Officials said he gave no hint of a motive for the incident.

Pickett’s neighbors described him as a quiet man always willing to lend a helping hand. But there were indications that he may have harbored a grudge against the Internal Revenue Service--dating back to his firing from the agency in the late 1980s--and that he had suffered from mental disorders.

Beverly Buck, who at one time lived next door to Pickett for years, said: “I know he had some emotional problems, but it was not anything I thought could lead to this.”

She would not elaborate but said she thought his problems had been resolved long ago. “His mother would tell me she was worried about him, but that was years ago,” Buck said. Both parents are now dead.

Federal officials who sought a warrant to search Pickett’s home said in court papers late Wednesday that the suspect had contacted congressional offices in the past year about grievances he had with the IRS. Officials said Pickett was fired for missing too much time from work without permission. He lost an appeal of his dismissal and later filed a civil lawsuit in which he disclosed he had attempted suicide after being fired.

Mike Jewel, a neighbor who hired Pickett to perform accounting work for his business, told reporters: “I could tell he was aggravated by the tax system and the IRS sometimes. He was real quiet and sort of odd. . . . I think he lived a very secluded and lonely life.”

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said that the episode began when Secret Service officers on routine patrol in a car “heard shots fired and proceeded to surround a subject who was wielding a weapon” outside the south fence.

“He was waving [the handgun] in the air--it was pointed at the White House at one point--and pointing it in all directions,” U.S. Park Police spokesman Rob MacLean said at a news briefing.

And once, MacLean said, Pickett placed the gun in his mouth.

A tourist, Martin Manley, said the suspect jumped into some bushes when police and Secret Service officers rushed toward him and shouted: “Drop it!”

“Police were talking to him, telling him: ‘It doesn’t have to be this way, put the gun down,’ ” Manley said. “Then I heard one shot, and the police all rushed in.”

White House officials said a Secret Service officer fired a single shot that struck Pickett in the right knee, but that no other shots were fired during the 10-minute standoff.

Asked why officers fired on the suspect, Fleischer said: “They felt it was necessary. . . . He was armed with a weapon that he had discharged.”

Bush was in an exercise room at the time. “The president understood he was not in any danger,” Fleischer said.

Vice President Dick Cheney was working in his office, and First Lady Laura Bush was at the family ranch near Crawford, Texas, Fleischer said.

The shooting occurred on an unseasonably warm day in the capital, in the 50s, as tourists strolled past the White House near the Ellipse--occasionally pointing their cameras through the wrought-iron fence for an unimpeded view of the Executive Mansion and its fountain on the South Lawn.

Immediately after the incident, Secret Service sharpshooters spread out across the lawn, automatic weapons at the ready. A later search of the area outside the fence recovered a five-shot, .38-caliber handgun--along with a number of shell casings--officials said.

Despite its tight security, the White House over the years has been the scene of repeated assaults by people with mental problems or perceived grudges against the government.

In October 1994, a young Colorado hotel worker, Francisco Duran, pulled out a semiautomatic rifle from beneath his trench coat and fired several shots at the front of the White House from the sidewalk along Pennsylvania Avenue. Testimony at his subsequent trial showed he was motivated by intense hatred of the federal government and had notes in his possession reading “Kill the Prez.”

A jury rejected defense claims that he was a paranoid schizophrenic whose actions resulted from voices inside his head. Duran was sentenced to 40 years in prison for attempted assassination of the president--although no one was injured and President Clinton was never in immediate danger.

That incident and the Oklahoma City bombing were key factors that led officials to further tighten security, including closing a two-block stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicles in front of the White House.

A month before Duran’s shooting, a Maryland truck driver named Frank Corder died when he crashed a small Cessna plane--in an apparent suicide--into a magnolia tree planted by Andrew Jackson just outside Clinton’s White House bedroom. Corder had a history of alcohol and drug problems.

The airspace around the White House is officially restricted, but is only about a mile from the heavily used air corridors of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

And on Dec. 20, 1994, a homeless man brandishing a nine-inch knife was shot in the chest and leg by a U.S. Park Police officer when he charged across Pennsylvania Avenue from Lafayette Park and menaced a cordon of Park Police officers.

In still another incident involving an apparently deranged person, the Secret Service in May 1995 shot a man who scaled a White House fence carrying an unloaded gun. An official said the man had demanded to see Clinton.

The assassination attempt that wounded Ronald Reagan in March 1981 occurred several blocks from the White House, on the sidewalk outside a downtown hotel as Reagan was emerging with his Secret Service detail. The gunman, John W. Hinckley Jr., was tried but acquitted on grounds of insanity and still is in custody in a mental hospital.

In the recent presidential campaign, Bush promised a review of tightened security around the White House--including traffic restrictions on Pennsylvania Avenue, with its large concrete barriers. “It saddens me that threats of violence have closed this historic area to the general public,” Bush said last year.

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Times staff writers James Gerstenzang in Washington and Stephanie Simon in St. Louis contributed to this story.

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White House Shooting

A gunman outside the south fence of the White House waved a handgun Wednesday and fired several times, authorities said. After about 10 minutes, a member of the Secret Service’s emergency response team shot the gunman in the leg. The suspect was taken to George Washington University Hospital.

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Notable Attacks in Last 10 Years

September

1994: Pilot steals plane, crashes it on South Lawn in apparent suicide.

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October 1994:

Gunman fires two dozen rifle shots at front of White House. He is sentenced to 40 years in prison.

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May 1995:

Intruder shot after scaling fence with unloaded gun. Released after psychiatric treatment.

Compiled by JOHN TYRRELL/Los Angeles Times