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Bush Unharmed As Gunman Shot Near White House
WASHINGTON, Feb 7 (News Agencies) - A man brandishing a handgun at the White House while President George W. Bush exercised inside was subdued with a shot to the knee, officials said Wednesday, stressing Bush was never in danger.
A uniformed agent of the U.S. Secret Service charged with the president's safety ended a roughly 10-minute standoff outside the mansion's southern fence by felling a white, middle-aged man with one bullet to the knee and arresting him.
The incident, which occurred at 11:36 am (1636 GMT), came about 90 minutes after Bush held a public event on the South Lawn but officials insisted the U.S. leader, his wife, and Vice President Dick Cheney were never in danger.
"The vice president and the president continued their routine schedules," and Laura Bush was in Texas, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "The president was never in any danger," a Secret Service spokesman said.
But outside the mansion, automatic-weapon wielding agents deployed across the grounds, others took up positions on the roof, and tourists were escorted out of the White House gates as "routine precautions," said Fleischer.
The suspect, identified in news reports as 47-year-old Robert Pickett of Evansville, Indiana, was taken to George Washington University Hospital where he was in stable condition and expected to undergo surgery later in the day.
Fleischer said there was as yet "no evidence" to suggest an act of terrorism, and the Park Police said they were conducting a psychiatric evaluation.
Contacted by telephone, neighbor Beverly Buck told CNN that when she heard the report "I was hoping it was not our Bob" and detailed how the suspect had inherited his father's accountant business.
Fleischer said the incident had begun when a routine Secret Service patrol heard "a number of shots," raced to the source, and surrounded the man.
The suspect "was brandishing a firearm. He was waving it in the air. The weapon was pointed at the White House at one point and pointed in all directions," said Park Police spokesman Rob Maclean.
Authorities surrounded the suspect, witnesses told television networks, and tried to talk him into dropping the weapon and surrendering, saying "it doesn't have to be this way."
"We can't confirm now what state of mind this subject was in, whether he was planning to commit suicide or to injure himself or anybody else," said McLean.
When he refused to give up, Secret Service spokesman Marc Connolly said, an agent fired a single shot into the gunman's knee.
"It's a serious wound," said Doctor Yolanda Haywood, who treated the man at George Washington University Hospital.
The incident occurred on the opposite side of the White House from a block of Pennsylvania Avenue that authorities closed to traffic after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
But tight security has not prevented several high-profile incidents at or around the White House.
In 1995, Secret Service agents shot a man who jumped the White House fence armed with what turned out to be an unloaded gun.
In October 1994, a lone gunman positioned himself in front of the White House and rained 29 shots from a semi-automatic assault rifle into the building's north facade. One bullet pierced a window in the press briefing room.
Three nearby tourists subdued the shooter.
In the early morning hours of September 12, 1994, a Cessna airplane crashed onto the South Lawn of the White House, killing the pilot but injuring no one else.
The plane came to a rest against the mansion's south wall, causing minimal damage.
And in 1981, John Hinkley Jr. shot and wounded then-president Ronald Reagan, and severely wounded his press secretary near a Washington hotel.
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