MAJOR UPDATE:
Also credited to Ace.
The suspect has been found and questioned by the Secret Service.
URGENT UPDATE:
Thanks for the Memory to Ace of Spades HQ:
The latest regarding this story from the Washington Times is that they still haven't caught him: He's completely disappeared!
U.S. law enforcement officials have been unable to locate an upstate New York man wanted for questioning regarding threats to President Bush.
Original Post, 21 September 2004:
Thanks for the Memory to Drudge.
City alert in threat to Bush
BY MICHELE McPHEE and LEO STANDORA
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Lawrence Ward
The Secret Service clamped down on midtown last night to protect President Bush from a possible assassin armed with a hunting rifle.
Lawrence Ward, 59, left his upstate New York home Wednesday with a .30-30 lever-action hunting rifle in the trunk of his car, telling a neighbor, "I'm not coming back."
Inside his house in Bainbridge was a picture of Bush with the words "Dead Man" spray-painted near it, law enforcement authorities said.
Bush was in town for a fund-raiser at the Sheraton New York before speaking today at the UN General Assembly.
The Secret Service deemed Ward, a software engineer, such a "credible threat" that a three-square-block chunk of midtown was cordoned off.
Secret Service agents and city cops patrolled the area looking for anything suspicious.
Ward's ex-wife, Judith Ward, 59, who lives in Connecticut, told the Secret Service she thinks her former husband "is very dangerous and capable of killing someone and/or committing suicide."
She said Ward "is obsessed with weapons, [Oklahoma City bomber] Timothy McVeigh and the book 'The Dead Zone' - a novel about the stalking and attempted assassination of a presidential candidate," according to a Secret Service document.
The document, reviewed by the Daily News, said Ward sent his ex-wife a CD that mentions killing both Bush and Democratic rival John Kerry.
He also was said to be "obsessed" with his 19-year-old daughter, Priscilla Jane.
Judith Ward told The News she divorced her husband four years ago after 18 years of marriage because "he was a wife-beater and other things I don't want to talk about."
Authorities said Ward has a criminal past dating to 1991, including an indecent sexual proposal charge.
The neighbor in Bainbridge, a community about 40miles northeast of Binghamton, told authorities that Ward "frequently spoke of 'fighting the system' and other anti-government topics."
The neighbor said Ward gave him his house keys and told him to help himself. He then drove off in a blue 1997 Toyota sedan with the New York license plate BRF-6546.
Two days later, the neighbor went into the house, found the photo of Bush and called police.
Please pray for the safety of the President, the Secret Service agents, any innocent bystanders, and even this man. He's obviously mentally disturbed, and the ideal outcome would be that he spends a long, long time in a secure facility.
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