By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Police are trying to determine why a former Internal Revenue Service employee with a history of mental illness fired several shots outside the White House in a midday drama that is raising questions about security at the president's home.
The man, identified by law enforcement sources as Robert W. Pickett, 47, of Evansville, Ind., was shot in the leg Wednesday by a member of the Secret Service uniformed division after waving his gun at police and terrified tourists just outside the wrought-iron fence that borders the scenic South Lawn. He also put the barrel of the weapon in his mouth, U.S. Park police spokesman Rob MacLean said.
George Washington University Hospital said in a statement yesterday that Pickett's condition was "good." His discharge date "will be determined by the treating physician and his rate of recovery," the statement said.
One police official said Pickett may have been trying to force officers to shoot.
"From my experience, this was a suicide-by-cop attempt," Derrick Johnson, a District of Columbia police negotiator who had tried to calm Pickett, told The Washington Post.
Pickett, an accountant, was fired by the IRS in the mid-1980s, and neighbors said he resented the agency. He lived by himself, and acknowledged in court records that he suffered from mental illness and tried to commit suicide after his dismissal.
"I think he meant to hurt himself," Joseph Yocum, the Evansville lawyer who represented Picket when he lost his IRS job, said yesterday.
Just last week, Pickett sent an angry letter to the IRS commissioner, contending the U.S. government had destroyed his life and suggesting he expected to die soon. "My death is on your hands," the letter said. "I have been a victim of corrupt government."
President Bush was listed among those copied in on the letter, which was sent to The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Evansville Courier & Press. It was not known whether the president received it.
Wednesday's shooting was the latest in a string of security scares that have brought tighter protection for U.S. presidents. In 1995, then-President Clinton ordered Pennsylvania Avenue closed to cars and trucks in front of the White House following the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Okla. Earlier that year, a man was shot on the White House lawn after scaling a fence with an unloaded gun.
