Armed White House Fence Jumper killed

25/08/2015

Photo credit- Candice Monhollan - Daily Local News

Five months after his arrest for scaling a wall of the White House, a suburban Philadelphia man was shot and killed after slashing a sheriff’s deputy inside the Chester County Justice Center.

Gunshots rang out inside courthouse at 201 W Market St. in West Chester, Pennsylvania around 11: 50 a.m. Tuesday after an armed man charged past metal detectors leading to a lockdown of the building.

“Curtis Smith, from Coatesville, came directly into the justice center and pulled out a knife and attacked a deputy sheriff, slashing him,” District Attorney Tom Hogan said.

Another deputy then opened fire, striking Smith, said Hogan. Smith, 34, received first aid at the scene before being taken to Paoli Hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead.

A uniformed man with a bandaged hand could be seen on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance. Hogan said that sheriff’s deputy was treated for wounds to his arm and hand.

Luckily no one else was hurt.

“The sheriffs did their jobs, the lockdown went perfectly,” said Hogan.

Hogan identified Smith as the same guy who allegedly jumped the outer perimeter of the White House back in March and was detained by Secret Service.

Smith was set to face burglary, assault and harassment charges at a preliminary hearing — that has been continued multiple times — in October stemming from a May domestic assault arrest, according to court records. He also pleaded guilty in late May to traffic violations. It wasn’t clear why he was at the Pennsylvania courthouse Tuesday.

Attorney Lewis Hannah III, who represented Smith in the domestic violence case, called his client’s death “really tragic.”

“He was a truck driver,” Hannah said. “He worked every day, had a family, a wife, you know, you would have never have thought.”