Updated at 7:55 p.m.



By PETER GOONAN, GEORGE GRAHAM and PATRICK JOHNSON

Staff writers



SPRINGFIELD - Seconds after learning a jury found him guilty of sexually assaulting a child, a defendant in Hampden Superior Court pulled a sharpened metal object from his pocket Friday morning and slashed his throat.



Donald R. Gibson, 39, of Springfield, was able to cut himself with a sharp piece of metal from a battery casing while Assistant Clerk of Courts Laura S. Gentile announced guilty verdicts on two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14.



Court officers grabbed him, disarmed him and tried to control the bleeding as the jury was ushered out of the courtroom, according to those present.



First Assistant District Attorney James C. Orenstein said Gibson's wounds did not appear to be life-threatening. A spokesman with Baystate Medical Center said he had no information on Gibson's condition.



The Hampden County Sheriff's Department is investigating how Gibson could arm himself with a makeshift weapon and bring it into the courtroom undetected, said spokesman Richard J. McCarthy.



The object was a piece of metal from a battery case and about the size of a quarter, he said.



Gentile said she had just finished reading that Gibson had been found guilty of two counts and was about to announce he had been found innocent of a third when she was interrupted by Gibson screaming.



She said she looked over and saw court officers George Bass and Richard Budzyna rush to subdue him. And then she saw the blood.



"There was a lot of blood," she said.



She said several times during her 12 years with the courts she has seen defendants who had to be restrained.



When Gibson began screaming, she did not consider it very unusual until she saw the blood, Gentile said. That was a first, she said.



She credited Bass and Budzyna for acting quickly to minimize Gibson's action and injury, and Judge Bertha D. Josephson for maintaining order while the jury was cleared from the room.



"The court officers were amazingly quick. When they saw the slightest movement, (Gibson) was being subdued." One of the officers compressed the wound with a leather glove while the other disarmed Gibson and put handcuffs on him, she said.



Gibson was not wearing handcuffs, she said. Defendants never appear in handcuffs before a jury because it could influence the verdict.



After Gibson was restrained, Gentile read the third verdict announced he had been found innocent of a third charge.



The scene was alarming, said those present.



"It's a very rare event and was extremely unsettling to the victim's family, in the courtroom at the time, as well as the jury that witnessed it," Orenstein said.



Gibson's lawyer, John J. O'Neill, said the episode was "very intense. What happened was very traumatic for everyone involved." He said he had not been updated on his client's condition.



He said he is due back in court with Gibson for sentencing Aug. 21. Josephson ordered Gibson's right to bail revoked. His last known address was on Sumner Avenue.



While the trial began Wednesday, Gibson has been an inmate at the Hampden County Correction Center in Ludlow since Jan. 5, 2006, according to McCarthy.



Gibson was charged with three separate acts on a 11-year-old child, Orenstein said. He was arraigned on the charges March 8, 2006. Bail at that time was set at $5,000 cash or a $50,000 surety, according to the clerk's office.



With the start of the trial, the Sheriff's Department had brought Gibson to the courthouse each morning from the jail, where he had been serving an unrelated sentence. McCarthy would not say what the previous conviction was for, and O'Neill said he would not give any information about his client's past.



McCarthy said Gibson went through normal screening processes at the jail before leaving for the courthouse. These include sitting in a metal-detection scanning chair and being tested with another scanner that checks the head and mouth.



Video confirms that Gibson underwent both scanning procedures, McCarthy said.



It's possible, McCarthy said, that the weapon's size and composition, perhaps of some type of alloy, enabled Gibson to evade detection.



"We have begun testing the metal detection system, so we don't have any definitive answers right now," McCarthy said.



McCarthy said it's not unheard of at the jail for a battery casing to be fashioned into a weapon.



"In the past, just about anything with any kind of metal or alloy has, at one point, been fashioned into a potential weapon," McCarthy said.

