LPD: 'Full confidence' in investigation into judge's shooting; asks for tips 'no matter how small it may seem'
Judge Meyer tells community from the hospital: ‘This horrific violence will not shake my belief in the importance of peacefully resolving disputes.' Plus, a look back at other threats to judges.
Update: 5 p.m. Wednesday
In the first public update since Monday, Lafayette police said Wednesday afternoon that the investigation into the shooting attack at the door of a Tippecanoe County judge’s home on Sunday “remains active, rigorous and ongoing.”
Police officials on Wednesday afternoon held firm on its approach to the case and did not offer additional details of the shooting that injured Superior Court 2 Judge Steve Meyer and his wife, Kim; any description of the person who came to the Meyers’ home and shot through their front door; or whether any arrests had been made.
“Our investigative teams are diligently following all leads and thank the community for their support,” the LPD release said Wednesday afternoon, saying that the investigation included work by the LPD Violent Crimes Unit, LPD crime scene investigators, the Tippecanoe County Prosecutor’s Office Major Crimes Unit, the Indiana State Police and the FBI.
“The Lafayette Police Department maintains full confidence in the expertise of the multi-agency team and remains focused on a thorough, exhaustive review of all available evidence,” the Lafayette police release said. “Community assistance remains vital to this case. Anyone with information related to this incident, no matter how small it may seem, is urged to contact the Lafayette Police Department at 765-807-1200.”
Here’s more reporting from Based in Lafayette from earlier Wednesday.
Update: 4 p.m. Wednesday
Judge Steve Meyer, being treated in an Indianapolis for wounds to his arm after he and his wife, Kim, were shot in a Sunday afternoon attack at their home in Lafayette, issued a statement Wednesday afternoon, saying that he was recovering.
Here’s what he said, via the Indiana Supreme Court:
“I am so grateful for the outpouring of support from friends, the community, court colleagues, and law enforcement. I want to express my heartfelt thanks to my medical team. I am receiving excellent care and I am improving. Kim is also deeply appreciative for the community support, and she too is healing.
“I want the community to know that I have strong faith in our judicial system. This horrific violence will not shake my belief in the importance of peacefully resolving disputes. I remain confident we have the best judicial system in the world, and I am proud to be a part of it.”
Posted at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday
Other times local judges were targets of threats, attacks
Information remained scant Wednesday about an investigation into a Sunday afternoon shooting attack at the Lafayette home of Tippecanoe Superior Court 2 Judge Steve Meyer.
Lafayette police had not offered an update or responded to questions, as of early Wednesday, about a manhunt for a suspect who reportedly shot through a door, hitting Steve Meyer in the arm and wounding Kim Meyer, his wife, in the hip.
There had been no reports of arrests, official descriptions of a suspect or acknowledged motives, with the most recent update from police coming just after noon Monday about an investigation that includes the FBI, the Indianapolis State Police, the Lafayette Police Department and other local agencies. That’s a span of more than 48 hours.
On Tuesday, Kim Meyer told BiL that Steve Meyer “is on the mend” but was still hospitalized and faced additional surgeries on his arm and likely a long rehab. Kim Meyer was treated for her injuries and released from a Lafayette hospital on Sunday.
The case, which has been widely reported by national media outlets, prompted Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta Rush, who is a former Tippecanoe County judge, to remind judges to be vigilant about security and that they “must not only feel safe, you must also be safe.”
In December 2023, the Indiana Supreme Court surveyed the state’s judges about security in their courtrooms and beyond, as the courts looked for funding to beef up safety measures. Of the 214 judges who responded – from more than 600 across the state – 74% said they’d been a target of a threat. Of the 159 who said they’d been threatened, 78% of the judges said they’d received threats “occasionally or often.”
OTHER CASES: In the past 30 years, here were three high-profile cases of threats and incidents targeting the local judiciary in some way.
Attempted Tippecanoe County Courthouse bombing: On Aug. 2, 1998, shortly after 10 p.m. on a Sunday night, someone in a stolen 1979 Ford F-250 pickup truck rammed through the glass doors at the Fourth Street entrance of the Tippecanoe County Courthouse. The truck carried a payload of diesel fuel and gasoline – contained in four 55-gallon drums and another 30-gallon drum – along with a metal cylinder investigators later would say had as much as 200 pounds of black powder mixed with metal shavings. A six-foot wick leading to blasting caps was charred but did not stay lit.
Firefighters, facing a fire that had the metal drums bulging, were able to put out the blaze near the center of the first floor at the 19th century courthouse – an effort credited with saving the centerpiece of downtown Lafayette and symbol of Tippecanoe County’s justice system. The following day, investigators hauled the truck and the contents to a gravel pit off South River Road and detonated what had been deposited in the courthouse. Reports from that day say the explosion shook the ground a quarter-mile away.
The driver disappeared from the scene. No one has been arrested since that night. And investigators did not publicly settle on a motive for the crime. Judges and county officials already had been debating security features for the courthouse; the bombing attempt sped those conversations, with the county installing bollards at every ground floor door, lining up security cameras inside the courthouse and funneling foot traffic to a single public entrance monitored by security guards and a screening equipment.
Here’s a story I reported for the J&C in 2018, at an anniversary of the bombing attempt, recounting more of the history and the investigation that continued two decades later: “Unsolved: 20 years after a truck bomb nearly blew up Tippecanoe Co. Courthouse.”
Home invasion at home of Judge Loretta Rush: Rush, now Indiana Supreme Court chief justice, was a judge-elect in Tippecanoe Superior Court 3 in November 1998 when John Jessie Swaynie, 26, of Arizona, kicked in the front door at her Lafayette home at 4 a.m. and attacked Rush’s husband, Jim. According to accounts in the J&C, Rush had been Swaynie’s court-appointed attorney at one point. According to coverage of the trial that followed, Swaynie reportedly had been under the delusion that the judge-elect had been in danger. During a struggle between Swaynie and Jim Rush, according to police accounts from the time, Loretta Rush ushered her children into an upstairs bathroom and, after not getting through immediately to police, jumped from a second-floor window and ran to get help from neighbors. The late Doug Eberle, then chief operating officer with the local hospitals, wrestled Swaynie away from Jim Rush, a move police credited to saving his life, until officers arrived. Swaynie was sentenced in October 1999 to 70 years in prison.
Federal conviction for Pine Village man threatening judges, police and the courthouse: Samuel Bradbury, of Pine Village, was sentenced to more than three years in prison in 2016 on federal charges accusing him of posting threats on social media targeting local judges and law enforcement officers by name, along with saying he planned to blow up the Tippecanoe County Courthouse and police cars.
According to accounts in the J&C, Bradbury was 22 in 2014, when he posted on Facebook that the Tippecanoe County Courthouse “will be blown to pieces within the month” and allegedly making death threats against an Indiana Supreme Court justice, a local judge, the Tippecanoe County sheriff and a West Lafayette police officer, while referencing a pair of two former Lafayette residents who had killed three – including targeting two police officers eating lunch in a restaurant – in a shooting spree in Las Vegas months earlier.
Bradbury’s attorneys defended the posts as satire, pointing to a tagline he’d included: “FREE SPEECH EXERCISE FOOLS.” But, according to charges in the case, police found bags of aluminum powder and black iron oxide, precursors used to manufacture an incendiary device called thermite, which Bradbury had said he and his band of “765 Anarchists” were going to use to take out the courthouse. A federal judge, at the time, issued a no-bond order, writing that the court “does not have to accept his disclaimer, particularly in light of the magnitude of his (threats).”
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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.