White House gunman 'had death wish'
Police in the US claim a former tax officer who fired several shots outside the White House was trying to get himself killed.
The suspect, Robert Pickett, 47, of Evansville, Indiana, was shot in the leg by a member of the Secret Service after waving his gun at police and tourists outside the lawn fence.
One police spokesman said Pickett, who has a history of mental illness, may have been trying to force officers to shoot and at one point Pickett had put the gun in his mouth.
"From my experience, this was a suicide-by-cop attempt," police negotiator Derrick Johnson told The Washington Post.
Pickett was sacked by the Inland Revenue in the mid-1980s and neighbours said he resented the agency.
Last week Pickett sent an angry letter to tax bosses, claiming the US government had destroyed his life and suggesting he expected to die soon.
"My death is on your hands," the letter said. "I have been a victim of corrupt government."
While Pickett was being treated at a Washington hospital, authorities were deciding whether to charge him with violating the city's ban on handguns or a more serious federal count of assaulting a federal officer.
Dr Yolanda Haywood said when Pickett was brought to the hospital he was silent, unusually calm for someone with a bullet wound. He also was to undergo psychiatric evaluation.
Pickett's brother Stephen, of Sleepy Hollow, Illinois, expressed regret.
