Texas DA Killed in Office's 2nd Murder in 2 Months

A Texas district attorney and his wife have been gunned down in a flurry of bullets inside their own home, becoming the second member of his office killed in two months, reports the Dallas Morning News. Sources said the door of Kaufman County DA Mike McLelland was kicked in, in a grisly scene discovered yesterday; wife Cynthia was also found dead in the house. The deaths follow the fatal shooting of assistant DA Mark Hasse on Jan. 31; he was gunned down as he was walking into a courthouse.

The murders sent police, FBI agents, and Texas Rangers scrambling to assure the safety of other members of the DA's office. "They need to shut the office down for a while," said a Kaufman defense attorney. "I think everybody there is a target. They’re not safe in the streets in downtown Kaufman. They’re not safe in their homes." McLelland had said that, like other local law enforcement officials, he was taking safety precautions in the wake of Hasse's death, but that, "there’s no holes for me to hide in, and that’s not my style anyway." Officials had been investigating to see whether there was a link between the Hasse case and Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements' murder, adds the AP. (More district attorney stories.)