Court Rules McDonough Toilet Shooting Was Self-Defense

McDonough Gymnasium (file photo). While other publications have felt it appropriate to print photos of the shattered remains of the toilet, we feel these photos are too graphic to be shown here.

JUDICIARY SQUARE—In a surprise ruling this afternoon, Judge Angela Hardy of the D.C. Superior Court cleared alleged Midnight Madness toilet-shooter freshman Alex Thiele of all charges after taking into consideration the “clear, malevolent posturing” of the toilet towards Thiele.

“I do not want to imagine what this horrifying situation would have been like had Mr. Thiele not coincidentally stolen a gun from a purse in the bleachers just moments before going to the bathroom,” Hardy said as she announced her ruling.  “Thankfully for the safety of Mr. Thiele and everyone in that gymnasium threatened by this toilet, he drunkenly decided to exercise his Second Amendment rights on Friday.”

In testimony yesterday, the witness who identified Thiele and was in the bathroom at the time of the shooting, James Hanover (NHS ’12), said the toilet made him fear for his life.  According to the witness, the toilet began making loud, threatening guttural noises to Hanover and Thiele while an unknown associate of the toilet was departing the stall where the toilet was apparently making black-market arms deal.

“I could smell something sulfuric coming from the stall,” Hanover told the court.  “I think the toilet was making homemade weapons in there and selling them, and when the two of us discovered its operation, it started threatening us.  Who knows how many weapons it had stashed away in there, ready to shoot at us.”

Thiele walked into the stall and shot a gun he had taken out of the purse of an off-duty Park Police officer, court documents say, destroying the toilet in the process.  A mourning relative of the toilet, the plant manager who oversaw its construction, David Rogers, told the court that producing and selling illegal weapons was out of character for the toilet.

“If [the toilet] were still with us today, it would be here refuting these silly allegations,” Rogers said.  “I made a good toilet.  It never hurt anyone.”

Prosecutors had earlier dropped the unregistered-firearm charge against Thiele after he agreed to cooperate in an investigation of the toilet’s black-market arms deals.  Metro police think the bathroom fixture was part of an extensive underground network.

There are still questions surrounding Thiele’s statements that the gun was handed to him by an unknown black man.  Thiele’s attorney, Monte Stermaul, argued in his closing remarks that Thiele had never seen so many black people in his life before attending Midnight Madness, and in his drunken haze and extreme emotional state after nearly being killed by the toilet, he mistakenly thought that the basketball team had divinely show him the location of the gun in a vision so that Thiele could protect them.  Judge Hardy apparently accepted this explanation, as she made no mention of the “unknown black man” in her ruling.

Though the University made it clear during the trial that Thiele was not allowed in his dormitory, Village C West, it gave Thiele a hero’s welcome there this evening after officially renaming the building Alex Thiele Bathroom Hero Hall.  The ceremony was attended by President John J. DeGioia, Coach John Thompson III, and insurance agent Craig Perry, who had sold two separate life insurance policies on Greg Monroe to his parents and to the University for the star center’s sophomore season.

“We are all proud of Alex for his accomplishments in that bathroom Friday night,” DeGioia said.  “He truly embodies the ethos of Georgetown that we have upheld throughout our centuries-long history: work hard; play hard; and if you feel threatened by a bathroom fixture, shoot it with a stolen firearm.”