MAN MADE WRONG MOVE AT WRONG TIME
YUMA DAILY SUN
Wednesday, December 21, 1994
Associated Press
Shooting NEAR White HOUSE: Police have been sensitized by three
recent security scares.
WASHINGTON
By HARRY F. ROSENTHAL
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Across Pennsylvania Avenue from the most famous
address in the United States is a manicured park where the
homeless and the dispossessed gather, along with those who are
desperately anxious to be heard.
On Tuesday, one crossed the street with knife in hand. It was
rush hour, is daylight.
Whatever Marcelino Corniel had in mind, his timing was lousy.
The police agencies responsible for White House security have
been sensitized by three recent security scares: an airplane
crashing on the South lawn, a man who sprayed bullets against the
mansion and a shooting only last Saturday.
Corniel was shot as U.S. Park Police officers contained him,
guns drawn, in a semicircle. In a city where gunplay is a daily
fact of life, it would have gone down as just another police
incident were it not for the time and place.
Corniel had been living in Lafayette Park, which is dotted with
ancient boxwoods, Southern magnolias and dozens of evergreens.
Its benches invite contemplation; Bernard Baruch used to hold
court on one. Stephen Decatur's house is along one side. Dolley
Madison's house faces one corner. John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay and
Lincoln's secretary of state, William H. Seward, lived along one
side in a long-gone Boarding house.
In recent decades, the park has been an ideological
battleground. During the Vietnam War it was the locus of constant
protest. When the Six-Day War broke out in the Middle East in
1967, Jews gathered there to trade shouts with Arabs who were
restricted to the sidewalk.
SUSPECT MISSING FROM ANAHEIM
The Associated Press
ANAHEIM -- The homeless man shot by police in front of the White
House on Tuesday was reported missing from his Anaheim residence
by his relatives in August, police said.
A missing person report was filed on Marcelino Corniel, 33, on
Aug. 26, said Sgt. Mike Hannah.
The relatives called police on Tuesday to say that Corniel was
the same man who was critically wounded in a confrontation with
police near the White House gate, Hannah said.
Hannah said regulations did not permit him to release the names
of Corniel's relatives.
When they filed the report, relatives said Corniel had been
missing since Aug. 3.
Corniel was in critical condition Tuesday night at George
Washington University Hospital. A spokeswoman said temporary
repairs were made to his damaged liver and that more surgery
might be necessary.
Meanwhile, court records show that a man with the same name and
date of birth as the shooting victim has a long criminal record
in the Los Angeles area, including convictions for armed robbery
and assault with a deadly weapon.
The man listed in court and police records and the man shot by
U.S. Park Police both were born on Aug. 17, 1961.
Court and Department of Corrections records show that a
Marcelino Corniel was sentenced to five years in the California
Institution for Men at Chino for a 1986 robbery.
He served three years before being paroled, records show.
He and another man, Aaron Earl Jones, 26, were accused of
robbing three men in Culver City with a sawed-off shotgun on Jan.
23, 1986.
Pennsylvania Ave. Closure || Peace Park