Senior silverback chimps out at courthouse over cuts to its gubment check an sheeit

[Earl Turner]

http://www.fox5vegas.com/news/22119310/detail.html

Source: Courthouse Killer Angry Over Social Security
Security Officer, Gunman Killed In Shootout

Johnny Lee Wicks and Stanley Cooper

UPDATED: 3:52 pm PST January 4, 2010
LAS VEGAS -- The man who opened fire at the federal courthouse in downtown Las Vegas was upset about cuts to his Social Security benefits, officials said Monday.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 66-year-old Johnny Lee Wicks was killed in a shootout with officers shortly after 8 a.m.

Court records show Wicks sued the Social Security Administration in 2008, but the case was thrown out and formally closed in September 2009.

Wicks lived at the Sunrise Senior Village Apartments in Las Vegas. A manager told FOX5 that federal agents had been to the complex to question him about Wicks.

Las Vegas firefighters also reported a fire in one of the apartment Monday morning, about two hours before the shooting. Police did not immediately say whether there was a connection to Wicks.

Witness: 'I Think They Got Him'

The shooting began after the gunman, dressed in black and armed with a shotgun, stormed the entrance of the Lloyd D. George Federal Building.

A court security officer was killed and a deputy U.S. marshal was injured during the shootout.

The gunman ran from the building as seven officers returned fire. His body was found in some bushes across the street.

Within minutes, cell phone video taken outside the building was uploaded to the YouTube Web site by a witness, Nicholas Gramenos. Gramenos was reporting for jury duty when the shooting broke out.

On the video, dozens of gunshots can be heard as Gramenos stood across the street from the building. His last words recorded on the video were, “I think they got him.”

Doctors at University Medical Center were treating the 48-year-old injured marshal, who was in stable condition after surgery.

The fallen officer, 72-year-old Stan Cooper, was a 26-year veteran of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department before becoming a federal court security officer in 1994.

Authorities evacuated the Federal Building following the shootings and briefly moved employees to the nearby Las Vegas Academy. The Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas was also closed for the day following the shooting.

Las Vegas Boulevard remained closed between Bridger and Bonneville avenues Monday afternoon as officers collected evidence from the scene.

Security A Concern?

The shootings marked a tragic beginning to 2010 in Las Vegas and raised questions about security at public buildings.

Built in the early 2000s, the Lloyd George building was said to be one of the safest in the country and was designed to meet security standards enacted after the Oklahoma City bombing.

But those improvements, mainly designed to protect from bomb blasts, did not prevent the gunman from opening fire in the lobby.

The courthouse contains 10 courtrooms, as well as offices for United States Marshals and the U.S. Attorney, as well as offices for Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign.

[The Bobster]

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Wor...Vegas_Building

Guard Killed And Cop Hurt In US Shooting
8:44pm UK, Monday January 04, 2010

Adam Arnold, Sky News Online

A guard has been killed and a policeman is injured after they were shot by a gunman in a US courthouse.

The attacker was later killed in a shootout with authorities after the incident in Las Vegas at around 8am (local time) on Monday.

The gunman had opened fire inside the Lloyd D George federal building, which contains offices for officials including US senators Harry Reid and John Ensign as well as courts.

The guard was a 65-year-old court security officer who later died of his wounds.

The policeman who was injured was a deputy US marshal. He is in a stable condition in hospital.

Sources told Fox News that authorities believe the gunman was an African-American male who acted alone and there did not appear to be any other suspects involved.

The shooting happened in the reception area of the building, located on Las Vegas Boulevard between Bridger and Bonneville avenues.

Chief Deputy Marshal Roxanna Lea Irwin said it appeared a shotgun was used during the confrontation but the motive for the shooting was unclear.

[vorlos]

http://**************/news/courthouse-...-80624367.html
Court officer, suspect killed in federal courthouse shooting

The gunman who opened fire in the federal courthouse this morning, killing a security officer and wounding a deputy U.S. marshal, was Johnny Lee Wicks, according to a law enforcement source.

In 2008 Wicks filed a federal race discrimination complaint against a regional commissioner with the Social Security Division. Wicks’ complaint stemmed from an encounter he had with the regional commissioner at the social security office after learning his monthly social security payment would be reduced.

The security officer killed in the gunbattle was 65-year-old Stan Cooper, a retired Las Vegas police officer who worked for a federal contractor providing security at the courthouse, according to a source.

The gunman opened fire about 8 a.m. inside the lobby of the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse, 333 Las Vegas Blvd. South.

Las Vegas police spokeswoman Barbara Morgan said the shooter had been shot in the head.

“It looks like he went in there and just started unloading,” Morgan said.

The security officer was hit in the chest, and the deputy marshal was shot in the arm, he said. The 48-year-old marshal remained at University Medical Center in serious condition, though his injuries were not life-threatening, according to a source with knowledge of his injuries.

The gunman was shot and killed at the scene, FBI Special Agent Joseph Dickey confirmed. The gunman, who hid his gun under a black coat, died across the street, at the Historic Fifth Street School, 401 S. Fourth St., shortly after the shootout, he said.

Seven marshals and court security officers returned fire in the gunfight, Dickey said.

Investigators have not determined a motive for the shooting, but Dickey said "this was not a terrorist event."

Dickey also said the surviving court officer was in "good shape."

Authorities believe the shooter acted alone, Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Roxanna Lea Irwin said.

The courthouse was evacuated and Las Vegas police cordoned off the area for several blocks.

After police arrived, paramedics wheeled at least two people out and down a ramp to ambulances. Dickey called the building evacuation “standard procedure” in such an incident, and said it was “for the safety of everybody in the place.”

"He walked into the courthouse and started shooting," U.S. Sen. John Ensign said.

Several downtown streets were shut down and traffic was diverted. Las Vegas Boulevard in the downtown area was closed to northbound and southbound traffic. The Las Vegas Academy, 315 S. 7th St., was on lockdown. The Regional Justice Center has been closed for the rest of the day.

Outside UMC a couple hours after the gunfire, a procession of more than a dozen police motorcycles and other vehicles escorted the body of Cooper from the hospital to the coroner's office.

About 20 law enforcement officers from the FBI, U.S. Marshals, Metropolitan Police Department and other agencies standing outside the UMC Trauma Center saluted as the procession drove by.

Jon McGovern, who runs a hot dog stand outside the Courthouse Bar & Grill, said he was setting up the stand around 8 a.m. when he heard two or three “pops” in quick succession, followed by other shots that “went in cycles.” He said at least 30 to 40 rounds were fired.

“It sounded like a fireworks show,” McGovern said.

He said that soon after the gunfire, about 30 to 40 people ran away from the shooting and down Lewis Avenue toward the restaurant shouting “Get down, get shelter.”

Mario Fenu, a defense attorney, said that about 8 a.m. he was walking on the sidewalk next to the courthouse heading toward the entrance when he heard a “pop.”

He said he thought it might be a gun but didn’t think it was near him because of the way sounds reverberate off the building, so he kept walking.

Five seconds later he heard “five pops” in succession, he said.

He said when he turned the corner he saw a man who didn’t appear to be a police officer in an “attack stance” aiming “a long gun” at the entrance of the building. The shooter was hiding behind a column.

Fenu said he saw another man behind a column on the far end of the patio, also in an “attack stance,” but couldn’t be sure if he was an accomplice, a law enforcement officer or an innocent bystander.

As Fenu ran away, he said the barrage intensified, possibly as marshals returned fire from the courthouse.

“I go to gun ranges and don’t hear that much ammo,” Fenu said.

Dozens of potential witnesses of the shooting were corralled inside the auditorium of the Las Vegas Academy where they were gradually being released about 10:45 a.m.

One attorney who declined to give his name said he stopped in the courthouse cafeteria before an 8:30 a.m. court appearance when he heard five or six shots.

"It was loud. It sounded like someone dropped a pan or something," the attorney said.

He said he didn't see anything but as he was later led out of the buidling, he saw bullet holes near the courthouse's front entrance.

He also said there might be more than 100 people in the school's auditorium.

U.S. Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign have their Southern Nevada offices in the federal building. Neither was in the building this morning, aides said. Reid was at his home in Searchlight, a spokesman said.

Fifteen people work in Reid's office, while there are 10 who work for Ensign, according to aides in Washington. It was not known how many were in the building at the time, but whoever was there was evacuated along with other workers.

"All are physically OK," Reid spokesman Jon Summers said of the senator's staff.

“My thoughts are with the victims of today’s shooting and their families," Reid said in a statement. "The law enforcement personnel who protect the courthouse put their lives at risk every day to keep the people who are inside safe and I greatly appreciate their service.”

The Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse opened in 2000 and is named for a longtime senior federal judge who still hears cases.

[Nigtarded]

Las Vegas Federal Building shooter Johnny Lee Wicks upset about social security payments
Jan. 4 2010 - 8:07 pm |

It’s ultimately a very a sad story today out of Las Vegas – one retiree trying to make ends meet kills another in a bout of anti-government rage.

Johnny Lee Wicks, the man who is believed to have fired on the Lloyd George US Courthouse today in Las Vegas, Nevada, was a retiree, upset that his social security benefits had been cut, and alleging racial discrimination as the root of the cuts. A federal judge saw otherwise according to the local ABC News affiliate, and threw out his federal racial discrimination lawsuit:

According to court documents, Wicks had filed a lawsuit against the Social Security Administration in April of 2008 alleging racial discrimination. In a handwritten complaint, Wicks said the discrimination had followed him from California to Nevada. Wicks wrote this about one California agent, “Doesn’t try to hide the way he feels about black people so he reduced my benefits.”

Wicks explained he suffered a stroke some years back. He claimed his benefits dropped from $886 to $445 a month and then to $128 a month.

U.S. Magistrate Judge George Foley reviewed the case and determined Wicks’ payments were reduced because Nevada, unlike California, does not provide a state supplement. When Wicks moved to Nevada he was no longer eligible for the supplement.

via Federal Building Gunman Identified – Las Vegas Now.

Wicks apparently set his home in a retirement village ablaze before he took a shotgun to the court building n downtown Vegas and started shooting. He injured a deputy US Marshal and killed Stan Cooper, a 65-year-old retired Las Vegas cop who was working as a private security guard at the Las Vegas Federal Court building. Wicks himself was killed in the shoot-out, before he could kill or injure anyone farther inside the building, fortunately.

If there’s any good news here, it’s perhaps that there was a fair amount of restraint on the media’s part. Perhaps they learned from the case of Bill Sparkman, the US Census worker who hanged himself in Clay County, Kentucky. His death became a lightning rod for our left vs. right kulturkampf as many progressives insisted, ultimately erroneously, that he was collateral damage from conservatives’ too-vociferous anti-government hysterics. Few in the media leaped to the conclusion that the Vegas shoot-out was the result of, say, anti-health care reform attitudes, given that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has an office in the building.

Of course, I’m still trying to be hopeful that the fact that Wicks was a black man shooting at a federal building won’t also be worked into the kulturkampf by agents of conservative histrionics. Rush Limbaugh is taking a few days off after his brush with the medical system, so he won’t be taking to the air tomorrow to declare that crimes like this happen only in “Obama’s America.” If anyone else out there was thinking about staying something like that, please, don’t. Let’s just all be thankful that there weren’t any more senseless deaths from this tragedy today.

http://trueslant.com/level/2010/01/0...rity-payments/

[Taylor]

Gunman opens fire at Vegas federal building, killing court officer before he was shot to death


Guard, gunman die in Vegas building shooting

Associated Press 01/04/10

A gunman who opened fire with a shotgun at a federal building Monday, killing a court security guard and wounding a U.S. marshal before he was shot to death, was upset over losing a lawsuit over his Social Security benefits, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.


The two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said 66-year-old Johnny Lee Wicks opened fire with a shotgun at a security checkpoint, touching off a running gunbattle with deputy U.S. marshals.

Although the investigation is continuing, the officials said evidence points to Wick's anger over his benefits case as the motive for the shooting.

Court records show Wicks sued the Social Security Administration in 2008, alleging he was the victim of racial discrimination because his benefits were reduced when he moved from California to Nevada in January of that year. The case was thrown out and formally closed last Sept. 9.

Gunfire erupted at the courthouse moments after 8 a.m., at the start of the work week, and lasted for several minutes. Shots echoed around tall buildings in the area, more than a mile north of the Las Vegas Strip. An Associated Press reporter on the eighth floor of a high-rise within sight of the federal building heard a sustained barrage of gunfire.

A passer-by said he counted at least 40 shots.

"The first shot that I heard was a shotgun blast. I knew it wasn't fireworks," said Ray Freres, 59, a sandwich shop manager and Vietnam veteran who said he was behind the federal court building at the time.

"I heard an exchange of gunfire. I was watching the street," Freres told the AP. "If they were coming my way, I was going the other way."

The U.S. Marshals Service said the victims included a 48-year-old deputy U.S. marshal who was hospitalized and a 65-year-old court security officer who died.

The dead guard was Stanley Cooper, a retired Las Vegas police officer employed by Akal Security, said Jeff Carter, spokesman for the Marshals Service in Washington.

Las Vegas police did not immediately provide information about Cooper. Carter said he was a police officer for 26 years and became a federal court security officer in Las Vegas in 1994.

Authorities did not immediately release the names of the wounded marshal.

U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., told reporters it appeared the gunman acted alone and the shooting was not a terrorist act.

In a handwritten lawsuit filed in March 2008, Wicks complained that his Social Security benefits were cut following his move and accused federal workers of discrimination because he is black.

"This case from the start was about race," Wicks wrote in the seven-page complaint, which has occasional spelling and grammatical errors.

"Lots of state worker(s) and agencies have took part in this scam mainly for old blacks who are not well educated," he wrote.

Wicks claimed the benefits reduction actually began in the state of California, after he had a stroke and wasn't able to go to government offices to protest an earlier benefit reduction.

He also claimed that Social Security staff called his new landlord in Las Vegas and told her not to help him.

"I didn't see it or hear it but I know it happen(ed)," Wicks wrote.

The case was formally dismissed Sept. 9 by U.S. District Court Judge Philip Pro in Las Vegas following a hearing Aug. 17 before federal Magistrate Judge George Foley Jr.

FBI Special Agent Joseph Dickey said the gunman, dressed in black pants, shirt and jacket, opened fire in front of a set of security metal detectors just inside the rotunda of the federal building,

"From what witness accounts have said, he walked in with a shotgun underneath his jacket and opened fire when he opened the doors," Dickey said. "Seven officers responded and returned fire."

Ensign said the guard who died had been shot in the chest.

A YouTube video recorded the sound of the running firefight as the man retreated across Las Vegas Boulevard toward another federal building and a historic school.

"I could see guards and everything coming out, and then all of a sudden I just started hearing pop, pop, pop. I mean, just like 30 or 40 shots," said Troy Saccal, a tax services manager who was arriving for work at the time.

Saccal said he thought he saw one guard slump to the ground and another move to help him.

The gunman died moments later in the bushes outside the restored Fifth Street School, where his body remained for several hours.

A Las Vegas police spokeswoman, Officer Barbara Morgan, said the man had been shot in the head.

John Clark, director of the U.S. Marshals Service in Washington, called the security officers heroes.

"The brave and immediate actions of these two individuals saved lives by stopping the threat of a reckless and callous gunman," Clark said in a statement.

Bullet holes marked the entrance of the eight-story modern federal building, which was locked down after the shootout and closed for the day. After police arrived, paramedics helped two people out and down a ramp to ambulances.

A helicopter view showed heavily armed officers in flak jackets scouring the federal building's roof. Shortly afterward, employees in small groups were escorted by armed officers to the auditorium of the Las Vegas Academy, a school three blocks away.

Dickey called the building evacuation "standard procedure" in such an incident.

The gunfire erupted as downtown was busy with office workers and jurors reporting for duty, both at the federal building and the 16-story Regional Justice Center, which houses state and local courts two blocks away.

The state courthouse was evacuated as a precaution and closed for the day, court spokesman Michael Sommermeyer said. Sommermeyer said later he could find no criminal or civil court filings under Wicks' name.

The Lloyd D. George U.S. Courthouse and Federal Building opened in 2002 and is named for a longtime senior federal judge who still hears cases. It has federal courts covering Nevada and offices for federal officials including Ensign and fellow U.S. Sen. Harry Reid. Neither was in the building at the time, authorities said.

The structure was touted as the first federal building built to comply with blast resistance requirements following the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City.

http://www.newser.com/article/d9d18l...-to-death.html

[Earl Turner]

It’s ultimately a very a sad story today out of Las Vegas – one retiree trying to make ends meet kills another in a bout of anti-government rage.

No, it was more like anti-White rage! (I'll bet some jew wrote this.)

Johnny Lee Wicks, the man who is believed to have fired on the Lloyd George US Courthouse today in Las Vegas, Nevada, was a retiree, upset that his social security benefits had been cut, and alleging racial discrimination as the root of the cuts. A federal judge saw otherwise according to the local ABC News affiliate, and threw out his federal racial discrimination lawsuit:

U.S. Magistrate Judge George Foley reviewed the case and determined Wicks’ payments were reduced because Nevada, unlike California, does not provide a state supplement. When Wicks moved to Nevada he was no longer eligible for the supplement.

This stupid old nigger could have just moved back to California and applied for the Social Security state supplement all over again, right?

But noooo, senior sambo decided to just blame its troubles on mean ol' rayciss whitey instead, file a frivolous lawsuit, and then chimp out with a shotgun against mean ol' rayciss whitey after its frivolous lawsuit got laughed out of court.

[Smilin' Jack]

Gosh, Chief, how come nobody's got a photo of the suspook?

[Whitebear]

(White) Tulsa Man Killed In Vegas Courthouse Shooting


Bob Cooper, brother of Stanley Cooper who was killed in the Vegas courthouse shooting.

LAS VEGAS -- A Tulsa man was the victim in Monday's deadly shooting at the Lloyd George Federal Building in Las Vegas.

Family members tell The News On 6 65-year-old Stanley Cooper died Monday afternoon after Johnny Lee Wicks opened fired in the courthouse.

Cooper was a security guard who had retired from the Las Vegas police department and had served as a Tulsa police officer in the 1960's.

Marshals say the 66-year-old Wicks was upset over losing a lawsuit in which he had claimed he was denied Social Security benefits because of his race.

Witnesses counted at least 50 shots and say once the chaos died down, Johnny Lee Wicks had been shot to death.
Authorities are now investigating the cause of a fire at the apartment building where Wicks lived, which happened before the shootings.
1/4/2010 Related Story: Oklahoma Native Helps Take Down Gunman in Vegas Courthouse Shooting

[Whitebear]

Mugshot of crazed racist afro terrorist and his White victim
News conference scheduled at federal courthouse

Johnny Lee Wicks and Stanley Cooper

[Earl Turner]

(The video on the linked page below seems to be mismatched with the one which contains the neighbor on-camera interviews.)

http://www.fox5vegas.com/video/22126149/index.html