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Guards tried to stop the man after he ran through metal detectors at the Merced County courthouse, but couldn't catch up to him as he moved down a crowded hallway, Chief Deputy District Attorney Harold Nutt said.

The man busted through the doors of Courtroom 2, and into an area where lawyers were standing as court was proceeding, Nutt said.

"As soon as he hit the inside doors I was behind him and I started yelling that he had a knife", Nutt said. "The officers started yelling at him, and yelling at everybody else to get down and at that point it was rather chaotic. People started screaming, people started heading for the door, and I just ran back outside."

As the judge tried to hurry his court clerks out of the courtroom through his chambers, the man held the knives in a stabbing position, Nutt said.

When the man refused to drop the weapons, three officers fired directly at him, and the man died on the courtroom floor, in front of several dozen attorneys, law enforcement officers and others doing business in the court, sheriff's spokesman Tom MacKenzie said.

No other injuries were immediately reported. The courthouse remained on lockdown as investigators interviewed witnesses and the three sheriff's deputies, MacKenzie said.

Nutt said a public defender told him he recognized the man who was killed as a previous client with a history of mental illness.

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