ATLANTA, Georgia - A massive manhunt was underway in the southeastern United States early Saturday after a man on trial for rape grabbed a deputy`s gun and shot dead a judge and two other officials in an Atlanta courthouse, before seizing a car and fleeing, police said.
Authorities posted a 60,000 dollar reward for information leading to the capture of the suspect after the last vehicle he was thought to have stolen was found late Friday in the same garage where it had been carjacked.
"We do not know what type of vehicle he is in. We don`t know where he`s at," Vernon Keenan, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, told reporters.
Police fear the suspect may have taken a driver hostage, he said.
"There`s no question this will go down in history as one of the most extensive fugitive hunts in Georgia," Keenan said.
Schools and several buildings in downtown Atlanta were shut after the shootings early Friday, which also left a deputy critically wounded.
The suspect, 1.86-meter (6-foot-1), 95-kilo (210-pound) Brian Nichols, 33, allegedly wrested a gun from a sheriff`s deputy, and fatally shot Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes, a court recorder and a deputy, police said.
"The suspect was on his way to the courtroom. He overwhelmed a deputy sheriff ... and it appears he took possession of her handgun," said Alan Dreher, deputy chief of Atlanta police.
"The suspect made his way into the courtroom and held the persons inside at bay with the handgun. He then shot and killed the judge, shot and killed the court stenographer and made his escape from the court," Dreher told journalists.
He said the suspect then fatally wounded a deputy as he fled the building.
Another deputy, apparently the one who escorted Nichols from the court`s detention center to the eighth floor courtroom, was in a critical condition with a gunshot wound but was expected to survive.
The suspected gunman pistol-whipped and injured a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution before stealing his car and driving off.
"Our officers are out patrolling every square mile of the city of Atlanta and also Fulton County," Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington told reporters late Friday.
"He`s very dangerous, he`s still armed and until we get him off the street, we will not rest," he vowed.
The suspect, who has been in jail for the past six months, was wearing a suit as he had been allowed to change out of his prison garb for his court appearance, Dreher said.
But he was not wearing leg shackles and was only escorted by one deputy, even though officials say he had been found hiding a hand-made knife in his shoe on Thursday.
Barnes had been clearing up some minor civil cases and was due to conduct a hearing in Nichols` rape case when the shooting started.
The jury and the prosecutors in the case had not yet entered the courtroom, witnesses said.
Barnes, 64, was one of the most senior judges in Atlanta, handling high profile and controversial cases.
Last month, he sentenced to probation an Atlanta ice hockey star, Dany Heatley, who killed a teammate in a car crash. Barnes agreed to a plea from the family of Graham Snyder not to put Heatley in jail.
Barnes also made national headlines when he ordered a woman accused of killing one of her seven children to undergo sterilization to prevent her from having more children.
Friday`s shootings followed the execution-style slaying in Chicago of a federal judge`s husband and mother less than two weeks ago.
Police identified a man who killed himself Wednesday as the prime suspect in the late February killings. The judge had recently dismissed a malpractice case the suspect brought against doctors who treated him for cancer more than a decade ago.
The rash of violence against court officials has raised concern across the United States and is to be discussed at a high level meeting of federal judges next week.

03/12/2005 07:32 GMT