Texas courthouse shooting leaves one dead, others injured

Reporting from Houston —  Authorities brought a sudden crisis under control at a courthouse in Beaumont, Texas, on Wednesday after a shooting left at least one person dead and several others injured.

Beaumont police told The Times that the situation had been resolved Wednesday afternoon with a suspect in custody.

Police said they could not release the name of the suspect or details of the shooting, including how many people had been killed or injured.

The shooting occurred outside the courthouse, near the entrance, according to ABC News.

According to KFDM-TV, police responded to a call of shots fired at the courthouse about 11 a.m. and found an elderly woman shot dead outside and at least three other people wounded. One was shot outside the courthouse, another in the basement of the county clerk’s office, and another at a nearby bus station, Beaumont paramedics and firefighters told KFDM.

The suspect fled to the XCEL building two blocks away; employees there took his gun and police took him into custody, then to a hospital, KFDM said.

ABC spoke with Rod Carroll, a spokesman for Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, who also said the shooting had resulted in at least one death and multiple injuries.

Carroll did not immediately return calls Wednesday.

Beaumont is a city of roughly 120,000, about 90 miles east of Houston.

A Jefferson County employee told KMBT-TV that the victims were all visitors at the courthouse, not employees.

Those involved in the shooting were reportedly scheduled to attend an afternoon hearing at the courthouse, according to KTRK-TV.

The incident is at least the second courthouse shooting in the U.S. in less than a week. On March 7, a barefoot man opened fire outside the Tulsa County Courthouse in Oklahoma, wounding a deputy and three other people. Andrew Joseph Dennehy, 23, was later arrested in connection with the shooting.

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molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com