A man who once appeared in a Champaign County courtroom on a civil case has been charged with throwing a Molotov cocktail into the courtroom Tuesday morning. The bomb caused heavy damage but left no serious injuries in the crowded courtroom.
Champaign County Sheriff David Madigan said that John E. Ewing, 37, was arrested at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday near a motel where he was staying in Urbana. He said that Ewing, who was charged with arson and carrying an explosive device, had been in and out of the Champaign-Urbana area many times and may have formerly lived in Peoria.
“He had a prior appearance in that courtroom before on a civil case, but I don’t have details of what it was about,” Madigan said.
He said evidence from the courtroom, which he would not disclose, pointed to Ewing as the bomber.
Madigan said the bomber walked into a third-floor courtroom filled with nearly 25 jurors, attorneys and spectators at a medical malpractice trial. Witnesses said he pulled a glass bottle filled with an amber-colored liquid from his hooded sweatshirt, lit the raglike fuse and hurled it at the bench where Circuit Judge George Miller was sitting.
“This guy came from nowhere,” said juror David Chambers, 33. “He came into the courtroom by himself, kind of looked around, grabbed the bottle out and threw it.”
Miller hit his head while ducking to avoid the flaming projectile, but he was otherwise uninjured. He was treated at Carle Hospital in Urbana and released. Four others who scrambled to take cover were treated for minor injuries at the scene, Madigan said.
More than 10 fire and rescue squads were summoned to the scene before the flames were extinguished in the courtroom in about 30 minutes, said Urbana Fire Chief William Pessemier.
The courtroom was destroyed, and another room suffered heavy smoke damage, but the rest of the four-story, nearly 100-year-old Romanesque-revival building was unharmed.
Those efforts included checking cases presided over by Miller to see whether they pointed to potential suspects who might have been angered enough by one of his rulings to plot revenge.
Although Champaign officials considered themselves lucky that no further injuries or damage occurred in their courtroom, the incident raised questions about security in the building.
The small, seven-courtroom building has four public entrances and no interior security measures, such as metal detectors, X-ray machines or armed bailiffs as are in place at most Chicago-area courthouses.
In Champaign County, each courtroom is monitored by an unarmed uniformed guard or a bailiff who, like the one watching over Miller’s courtroom Tuesday, receive on-the-job training in the use of handcuffs, Madigan said.
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Guards go through five-week courses at a state Department of Corrections academy, plus two weeks of court security classes.
Although many measures in place in other jurisdictions might not have stopped the type of attack carried out Tuesday, Madigan acknowledged that the “lack of court safety” has been a concern there.
Weeks ago, county officials presented a $100,000 courthouse security plan to the Champaign County Board, which has not yet taken action.
According to Presiding Judge J.G. Townsend, the plan calls for one public entrance with a metal detector and X-ray conveyor belt.
Second District Appellate Court Justice Fred Geiger, chairman of courtroom security committees for the Conference of Chief Judges and the Illinois Judges Association, said security is “becoming more and more of a concern, as people begin to realize from the number of incidents across the country that there really is a risk.”
He said all courthouses should have a list of security priorities.