LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The 20-year-old son of former Enron President Jeffrey Skilling has been found dead of unknown causes at his apartment in Southern California, police said on Thursday.

John Tyler Skilling, a student at Chapman College, was found dead on Tuesday night by paramedics who broke into his apartment after friends became concerned, Santa Ana Police Corporal Anthony Bertagna said.

"They were supposed to meet him for dinner and he didn't show up and they knew he was despondent over a recent break-up with a girlfriend," Bertagna told Reuters.

"They looked in the window and they could see him lying on the bed."

Bertagna said an autopsy turned up no signs of trauma or foul play, meaning a cause of death would have to await the results of toxicology tests in four to six weeks.

He said there were bottles of prescription medications found next to the body, but no suicide note.

"We don't know yet if it's a possible accidental overdose or suicide," he said.

Skilling's father Jeffrey was convicted of conspiracy, insider trading and securities fraud in 2006 and is serving a 24-year prison term.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is considering his latest appeal after hearing arguments last year.

"JT was a wonderful young man," Skilling's attorney, Daniel Petrocelli, said in a brief written statement. "Jeff and his family are heartbroken."

(Editing by Jerry Norton)

GOODWATER, Alabama (Reuters) – An Alabama police officer shot and wounded a defendant in a small town courtroom after he tried to grab a gun and attack a judge, authorities said on Thursday.

But three witnesses gave a different version of events at the municipal court in Goodwater, a town of around 1,500 in central Alabama, northeast of state capital Montgomery.

They said the officer used unnecessary force in twice shooting a defendant they said became unruly but did not attempt to get a gun and was anyway on crutches with a broken hip sustained in a car accident.

The second shot fired by the officer was unnecessary because the defendant lay prone, they said.

After the first shot the defendant "slid down real slow. The officer took two or three more steps and shot him again," William Allen, 20, who was in the courtroom's third row, said in an interview.

The Alabama Bureau of Investigation said the defendant: "attacked the Municipal Court judge and attempted to forcibly obtain a firearm when he was shot by a Goodwater police officer who was providing courtroom security."

The bureau, which did not name the defendant, based its statement on a preliminary investigation of an incident it said took place at around 9.39 a.m. local time. Witnesses said the defendant was local resident Brian Ford.

The wounded man was taken by ambulance to Sylacauga and transferred by helicopter to University of Alabama at Birmingham hospital, the bureau said.

Ford was in surgery at the hospital on Thursday afternoon, said hospital spokeswoman Nicole Wyatt.

Sara Williams, 69, a retired ambulance driver and fire fighter from Goodwater, witnessed the scene from the courtroom's front row.

The defendant shouted at the judge after he was sentenced, swung his crutches and "got real disorderly", provoking a melee but posed little threat because he was on crutches, she said.

People screamed when the first shot was fired and shouted at the officer not to shoot again but he told them to clear the court, "stood over him on the ground and shot him again," she said in a version similar to that of other witnesses.

"It was senseless to shoot him twice. I could have knocked him down," she said.

Police in Goodwater and the Coosa County sheriff's office declined to comment.

(Additional reporting by Peggy Gargis in Birmingham; Writing by Matthew Bigg; Editing by Jerry Norton)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal authorities ignored warnings that could have prevented a 2009 massacre at an Army base, two U.S. senators said in a report on Thursday that outlined intelligence failures similar to those in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan -- an Army psychiatrist who had been dubbed by two colleagues as "a ticking time bomb" -- was charged with murder in the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas that killed 13 and wounded 32.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, and Susan Collins, the panel's top Republican, said in the probe that authorities had information indicating that Hasan, a Muslim born in the United States to immigrant parents, was a threat before the November 5, 2009, shootings.

"Although neither DoD (the Department of Defense) nor the FBI had specific information concerning the time, place or nature of the attack, they collectively had sufficient information to have detected Hasan's radicalization to violent Islamist extremism but failed both to understand and to act on it," they wrote.

The Army has received an assessment from experts on Hasan's mental health and is considering whether he should face court martial and potentially the death penalty.

Intelligence agencies learned that Hasan had contacts with an Islamist sympathetic to al Qaeda and relayed the information to law enforcement, but no action was taken, the report noted.

The report identified the Islamist only as "Suspected Terrorist" and several portions of the report were redacted.

U.S. officials have said Hasan had exchanged e-mails with Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda figure based in Yemen.

OBSESSION 'SANITIZED'

The report said evidence of Hasan's "radicalization to violent Islamist extremism" was on display to his colleagues during his military medical training and he was referred to as a "ticking time bomb" by two of them.

"Not only was no action taken to discharge him, but also his Officer Evaluation Reports sanitized his obsession with violent Islamist extremism into praiseworthy research on counterterrorism," the report said.

The senators' investigation found specific and systemic failures in the government's handling of the case, and they recommended a number of corrective steps.

The FBI, in a statement, said it "recognizes the value of congressional oversight and agrees with much in the report and many of its recommendations."

The senators said their investigation shows that despite improvements over the past decade, U.S. authorities still need to do a better in sharing and acting on information regarding possible terrorists.

"A lot of progress has been made in connecting the dots," Lieberman, an independent, told a Capitol Hill news conference. "But this case, the Hasan case, shows the work is unfinished."

Intelligence failures were blamed, in part, for the September 11 hijacked plane attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Investigations uncovered a number of instances when U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies inadequately shared information.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, a crush of federal actions were taken to better track suspected terrorists, including creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky; Editing by Deborah Charles and Cynthia Osterman)