Police: Security guard fatally wounded at Las Vegas courthouse didn’t return shot before dying
By Ken Ritter, APWednesday, January 20, 2010
Police: Slain guard at Nev. court didn’t fire shot
LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas police are correcting accounts of a shootout that left a shotgun-wielding assailant and a security officer dead and a U.S. marshal wounded at a federal courthouse in downtown Las Vegas.
Police homicide Sgt. Russell Shoemaker said Wednesday that previous reports that the slain court security guard, Stanley Cooper, returned a shot before he died were wrong.
Shoemaker blames confusion in officials’ accounts during news conferences shortly after the shooting.
He also says the assailant, 66-year-old Johnny Lee Wicks wasn’t shot in the head. Federal authorities had said Wicks was wounded in the stomach and shot in the head.
The corrections come as the Clark County coroner announced a fact-finding inquest Wednesday into the Jan. 4 shooting.
