Other times local judges were targets of threats, attacks
Meanwhile, no updates from police in past 48 hours on investigation into the attack on Judge Steve Meyer at his Lafayette home.
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).”
THIS AND THAT …
WL READY TO BUY PROBLEM PROPERTY NEAR HIGH SCHOOL: West Lafayette will pay $221,000 to buy a house at 810 N. Grant St., where code violations have piled up over the years, in a move designed to reclaim the site as an owner-occupied property, according to terms approved Wednesday by the West Lafayette Redevelopment Commission.
The price was the average of a pair of appraisals, Chad Spitznagle, the city’s housing director, said.
The city initiated the proposed purchase in early 2025, working with owner Edward Bowden and the West Lafayette Enrichment Foundation, an organization initially set up nearly a decade ago to handle aspects of the city’s purchase of the Caretaker’s Cottage at the Grandview Cemetery on Salisbury Street. At the time, city officials said the proposed deal came after years of code violations filed with the West Lafayette City Court for the house, which is a block south of West Lafayette High School. Court records show a series of cases in recent years against Bowden in connection with violations for trash accumulation, rental code violations and unsafe conditions. In one recent case, filed in 2023, carried a $12,250 judgment ordered by the judge in May 2024, contingent on the house selling, according to online court records. A year later, that contingency on selling the house wound back to the city. Court records show the judgment was at $76,000 in December, before Bowden entered a purchase agreement with the city in January.
No set plans for the house and the property were laid out during Wednesday morning’s redevelopment commission meeting, though Spitznagle said the deed would carry a stipulation that it be used by a residential owner-occupant.
2026 GOLDEN APPLE AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED: Four Tippecanoe School Corp. teachers and one from the West Lafayette Community School Corp. last week were named 2026 Golden Apple Award winners.
They are:
Ann Hammons, an English teacher at Harrison High School.
Celeste Fernandez, a fourth-grade teacher at West Lafayette Intermediate School.
Sara Wright, a teacher at Cole Elementary.
Sarah Harmon, a teacher at Dayton Elementary.
Lisa Merryman, a teacher at Woodland Elementary.
The awards, given to 190 teachers since 1987, recognize teachers for their work in the classroom, as nominated by students, fellow teachers, principals and parents and then reviewed by a committee assembled by Greater Lafayette Commerce.
The winners will be honored during a ceremony at 6 p.m. Feb. 18 at the Greater Lafayette Career Academy.
OTHER READS …
Clinton County commissioners this week nixed a rezoning request that could have cleared the way for data center development on more than 700 acres, as J&C reporter Jillian Ellison reported. Despite a recommendation in favor from the Clinton County Area Plan Commission, county commissioners found red flags they couldn’t get past. Read more here: “‘Gut feeling’ leads Clinton County commissioners to deny data center.”
Indiana Capital Chronicle reporter Casey Smith had this from the Statehouse on a bill that would require all public schools to adopt a ban that prohibits students from using or possessing a wireless communication device during the school day and requires that any teacher-directed use of a device “for educational purposes” occur only on school-supplied devices. Read more here: “Indiana Senate advances bell-to-bell school cellphone limits despite bipartisan concerns.”
From Niki Kelly, Indiana Capital Chronicle editor: “After an attempt to add firing squads to Indiana law stalled in the Senate, a House panel on Wednesday passed a bill expanding the state’s execution methods. Firing squad and nitrogen hypoxia would be allowed alongside lethal injection to carry about Indiana’s death penalty under a bill that passed 8-5 out of the House Courts and Criminal Code Committee.” Read the rest here: “Firing squad, gas execution methods move out of House committee.”
Thank you for supporting Based in Lafayette, an independent, local reporting project. Free and full-ride subscription options are ready for you here.
Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.
A well-deserved recognition for Celeste Fernandez! She is dedication personified.
These nuggets from the archive provide a useful context for current events.