Man Caught With Gun At Daley Center

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Aug 24, 2010 5:40PM

If you can't take a bunch of knives into the Daley Center, it should go without saying that you can't take a gun in, either. But one man still tried this morning on the way to a hearing on the foreclosure of his home. Thomas Pridgeon, 48, showed up for his court hearing with a .45-caliber handgun tucked away in his briefcase with one bullet in the chamber and seven more in a clip. Pridgeon's defense when he was arrested and charged with unlawful use of a weapon: he forgot it was there. Tighter security has been in place at the Daley Center since the October 1983 Hutchie Moore shootings, when Moore, a wheelchair-bound police officer in the midst of a divorce trial, smuggled a gun into a courtroom where he opened fire, killing the presiding judge and an attorney.