Cops: Lawyer shoots at Census worker

LEANDER (KXAN) - A Leander attorney faces charges after police say she fired a weapon at a Census worker who was stopping by her house over the weekend.

Carolyn Barnes, 53, is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Travis County has filed a motion to revoke her $50,000 bond due to a previous assault on a public servant charge from January. 

Police say on May 8, Kathleen Gittel, an employee of the U.S. Census Bureau, stopped by Barnes' Leander home to "make contact with the resident," presumably as part of the bureau's effort to complete a Census count with residents who had not turned in their forms .

Barnes reportedly pointed her gun at Gittel, and then fired the weapon five times as Gittel tried to run. Williamson County Sheriff's Office spokesperson John Foster said none of the bullets hit the census worker.

Gittel positively identified Barnes in a photo lineup as the person who fired the weapon. Barnes is a medical mapractice attorney who has been practicing in Texas more than 25 years.

According to Williamson County jail records, Barnes has been booked into the WIlliamson County jail eight times before for charges ranging from contempt of court to making a terroristic threat. In 2002, a Williamson County jury found Barnes guilty of interfering with a routine traffic stop.

"She kept digging under her seat which the officer asked her not to do. She kept inching her truck forward which the officer asked her not to do," said Dee Hobbs, Williamson County Attorney's Criminal Division Chief. "They had to spike her tires, and eventually they had break the window and remove her from the vehicle."

Hobbs said Barnes had to be forcibly removed from her car in 1997 as well during a routine traffic stop in Williamson County.

More recent problems have also been mounting while she has been representing clients.

"She is becoming more and more aggressive in the courtroom, ignoring orders of visiting judges to sit down to let them finish talking, she becomes physically aggressive in her postures," said Hobbs.

Barnes typed up a document a friend, Michael Kearns, emailed to KXAN Tuesday titled "Probable Cause Affidavit for Warrant of Arrest and Detention." The four page statement calls for the arrest of Williamson County prosecutors, Williamson County Sheriff’s deputies and Round Rock police officers. Barnes dubs the group a “criminal street gang” who has "retaliated" against her.

"We learned a long time ago this is not humorous, this is not funny, this is a disturbed individual that has for some reason found it in her mind to see us as the enemy," said Hobbs.

In the document, Barnes zeroed in on a visit Williamson County Attorney Dale Rye made to her home May 3. Hobbs said a visiting judge issued a court order for Rye to go by her house to drop off evidence for a case, after Barnes refused to pick it up from the courthouse.

Kearns said he emailed Barnes "arrest warrant" to the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Marshals.

Barnes arrest history does not stop in Williamson County. In January Barnes was arrested at the Travis County Courthouse after allegedly hit a Travis County deputy at the security checkpoint after he found a knife in her possession and asked her to leave it in her car.

Violence against Census workers is nothing new.

In March, a man in Idaho shot at a worker who was trying to deliver a census form, police said. Richard L. Powell, 54, of St. Maries faces up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine on charges of exhibiting a deadly weapon. Authorities said Powell told the worker to get off his property and then fired a shotgun into the air.