Former attorney of Gwendolyn White speaks out, calls for more mental health resources – WRAL

Just one day after Raleigh police say a woman targeted two attorneys outside the Wake County Courthouse, WRAL News is looking into how this brings new conversations surrounding clients’ and attorneys’ safety.
Attorney Seth Blum said the double shooting Friday outside the old Wake County Courthouse hit too close to home.
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That’s because the accused shooter is his former client.
“She had, at the time that I represented her, called the police on her neighbors dozens of times, I think it was 37 times, and they got sick of it,” said Blum, a founding partner and criminal defense attorney with Kurtz and Blum Attorneys. “Every time the police came out, they would investigate, and Ms. White had this fixed belief that her neighbors were poisoning her through her air conditioning system, which there’s no evidence at all that that was true.”
Blum said he could tell that she had significant mental health challenges. When he heard about the shooting on Friday, his heart went out to everyone involved.
Gwendolyn White, 57, now faces two counts of attempted first-degree murder,  accused of shooting two lawyers, Mary Harris and Jeffrey Whitley, both attorneys representing the Rolesville Police Department in a body camera case. Police say White pulled the trigger as the two left the courthouse.
“I, of course, was terribly concerned for Mary Harris and for Jeff Whitley and their friends and family, and I even now wish them well,” Blum said. “But I felt awful for Miss White, who I knew had not been getting the treatment that she needed. I actually got a call indirectly; the police were apparently investigating other lawyers who might be targets of Miss White, and I understand that I was on that list.”
On Saturday, Raleigh police said both attorneys had non-life-threatening injuries and are expected to be OK. 
Blum told WRAL News he was contacted indirectly by a colleague after the incident, because he was one of the multiple attorneys police believe White potentially could have targeted.
The shooting is shining a light on violence and threats faced by lawyers and other legal professionals.
WRAL spoke with three other lawyers not connected to the shooting, along with the Wake County District Attorney. All four confirmed they’d been the subject of threats at some point in their career. All four also said it’s very rare for those threats to escalate to real violence.
“I do not work in the same county where I live on purpose, because of what I do,” said Cheri Patrick, with Patrick Law in Durham.
“We’ve got panic buttons throughout the place. Those call the police if somebody needs to push it,” Patrick said. “We do provide bear spray, particularly at the front desk.”
Patrick recalled one especially concerning incident from nearly 20 years ago.
“My son was just at the age where he was able to come home from school alone, and so he was home after school, and I was opening my mail, and I had gotten a package from an opposing party, and in that package were clippings and printouts, and all kinds of information about me and where I lived, and, you know, basically letting me know that he knew everything about me, and a letter, a long letter, telling me how his life had been fine until I came into his life,” Patrick said.
Andrew Fine, attorney and founder of FineCounsel in Durham, says he’s faced multiple threats in his career.
“It’s easy to lash out at the lawyer, that’s who’s there,” said Fine. “Even if the lawyer is just there doing a job, it’s very easy for people to identify the lawyer as the bad guy.”
“I worked for the state for a while early in my career for the Department of Children and Families, and I had on two different occasions parents threaten me,” said Fine.
“Then later in my career I had a kind of a bizarre situation where I was representing a victim in a fraud case, and I was in my cab headed back to the airport, and…friends of the person who was being prosecuted, the scam artist, called the taxi company to find out where I was,” said Fine. “They were actually trying to lure me somewhere, trying to meet me somewhere, so that they could, like, beat me up.”
Asked about threats she’s faced, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman wrote in a statement, “Unfortunately, a number of my Assistants and I have been the target of threats over the past few years.  We also have had several judges receive threats.”
Lawyers and legal professionals have been targets of violence in downtown Raleigh before.
In 2018, a gunman fired multiple shots into the Dysart Willis offices on Blount Street in the middle of the afternoon.
Just last year, Jesse Metcalf was convicted and sent to prison for threatening a Wake County prosecutor.

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