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Gunman shot outside White House
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A MIDDLE-AGED accountant with a history of mental illness fired several shots outside the White House on Wednesday and then was shot by the Secret Service as he waved his handgun menacingly, authorities said. The tense, noontime standoff sent tourists running for cover.
The drama unfolded just outside the fence at the edge of the South Lawn, 200 yards from the building where President Bush was inside exercising.
The man, wounded in the knee and hospitalized under guard, was identified by law enforcement sources as Robert W Pickett, 47, from Evansville, Indiana. He had been fired by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the mid 1980s, and neighbours said he kept to himself, resented the IRS and was obsessed with West Point, where he had dropped out after a semester in 1972. Pickett had acknowledged in court records suffering from mental illness and trying to commit suicide.
The shooting was the latest in a string of security scares that have brought tighter protection for US presidents. In 1995, then President Clinton ordered Pennsylvania Avenue closed in front of the White House following the Oklahoma City bombing. Earlier that year, a man was shot on the White House lawn after scaling a fence with an unloaded gun.
The latest incident, on a sunny, springlike day, triggered a tight security clamp down. Tourists were evacuated from White House rooms, and police in riot gear took up positions around the executive mansion and beyond its gates.
Secret Service officers on patrol in a car ``heard shots fired and proceeded to surround a subject who was wielding a weapon, a gun", White House spokesman Fleischer said.
Pickett was taken to George Washington University Hospital, five blocks away, where he was in serious condition after two hours of surgery to remove the bullet. He also was to undergo psychological evaluation.
Pickett had no criminal record and was not listed in Secret Service files as a potential threat to the president, authorities said. He lived alone in a modest, two-story house that had been owned by his parents before their deaths.
The shooting adds a new dynamic to an already heated debate over whether to reopen Pennsylvania Avenue, on the other side of the White House. Clinton followed the Secret Service's warnings about security threats in closing the famed street, but businessmen and city officials have pressed to have the decision reversed. The Republican Party platform last year called for the reopening.
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