expected to be in danger when she started the career she always wanted, practicing law. why did you want to be a lawyer? oh my gosh. in second grade, a judge came to my class and i fell in love with that, and i wanted to be a judge or a lawyer. her dream came true. by 2008, shannon had passed the bar exam, and got her first job as a prosecutor with the kaufman county district attorney s office. on the second floor of the courthouse in the center of town. i love to the office, the people around me were so knowledgeable. they were almost all from dallas. one of those lawyers from dallas was mark cassie, an experienced prosecutor. a guy who lived his job. did you learn anything? oh god. of course. we will go to mark for almost everything. that s because mark had prosecuted some of the worst criminals in texas. he was tenacious, he was an intellectual, and he was very quick on his feet. marcus busch is a lawyer with the department of justice.
rolled up. anybody know anything about him? he s one of the da prosecutors. while she was getting updates on mark. i don t know how many minutes passed by when a prosecutor came into the courtroom saying how bad it was. about an hour earlier, shannon had walked from the parking lot to the courthouse. that is the same route her friend and colleague, mark, was walking when he got shot. now, too afraid to go anywhere, she stayed inside praying for him. we are now just waiting to hear if he is going to live. but that news travels fast! it did not take very long for his trial partner to waken to the room and shake their head crying. that s when we knew he was gone. i can only imagine how horrible a moment that is. it is horrible. it will be in my brain forever. i will never ever forget that. there is not a day that goes by, that i do not go by here and think back to that day. and exactly what happened.
and those old cases from dallas. the killer s message ended this way, we are not unreasonable, but we will not be stopped. it s almost sounding like a game now. i think in his mind it was a big chess game. i think it was just for fun, to see if he could really exert complete and total control over the criminal justice system in kaufman county. by monday morning the story was topping the national news. perhaps that s exactly what the killer wanted. nbc s gabe guttierez is in kaufman, texas for us this morning. gabe, good morning to you. savannah, good morning. there will be stepped up security here at the county courthouse today. the district attorney s office will be closed to the public. this entire community is on high alert. that morning when shannon hebert came to her office, she had an armed escort. there s no leader at your office anymore. there s nothing. no one. when you come into work, how do you go forward? we had to move forward. we couldn t let them win. w
he was a former deputy sheriff and longtime attorney with an office right across the street from the courthouse. in 2010, he was elected by the people of kaufman to be justice of the peace. shannon hebert worked with him and said he had a sharp legal mind. in fact, he was a member of mensa, the organization for people with superhigh i.q.s. he was a great judge. i liked having him in there. i thought he was very fair. i mean, everyone respected him. williams, married for 15 years with no kids of his own, was a strong advocate for children and specialized in child abuse cases. lt. jolie stewart often worked with him on those cases. how do you think he was perceived amongst his fellow colleagues, other attorneys? i think that he had a lot of respect with his peers. he was kind of the go-to guy for family law. i know he had a love for children. tera williams-bellemare knows