Who Is Tom Pickert? Kansas Lawyer Shot Dead On His Front Porch

Kansas City police have been investigating the death of a prominent lawyer who was found shot to death on the front porch of his home Wednesday moments after he walked his children to school.

Police are still searching for the suspect who killed 39-year-old attorney Tom Pickert. Police said they found his body on the home’s front porch after he was said to have been shot around 8 a.m. EDT on Wednesday.

Police said Pickert's wife heard a gunshot outside her house and then found her husband fatally injured outside on the porch.

CBS affiliate KCTV reported that a van was noticed speeding away from the scene of Pickert's shooting, and it was later found in a nearby town. The van was registered to David Jungerman, a local businessman who knew Pickert, as he had recently been ordered to pay one of the lawyer’s clients more than $5 million for shooting the man in the leg.

Pickert, a personal injury lawyer for a Kansas City law firm; he was known to often handle nursing home abuse cases, according to his law firm biography.

He was the attorney on the prosecution's side in a civil case that involved a major judgment against the defendant, Jungerman, in January this year. The case stemmed from a high-profile shooting that occurred on Jungerman’s property, who runs a company that manufactures and sells baby furniture.

"Jungerman, the owner of the Babee Tenda Corporation, admits he shot two men he found on his property in September 2012. He says they were in the act of stealing copper from one of his buildings — both of them survived," reported television station KMBC TV, affiliated to ABC News. Jungerman never faced criminal charges.

In the case, Pickert represented one of the shot men, Jeffrey S. Harris, who was homeless, and who was said to have lost his leg as a result of his wounds from the shooting, according to the television station. It was also reported that a jury subsequently ruled against the businessman and ordered him to pay the victims about $6 million.

However, after the incident Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Kansas City Police told CBS News that Jungerman is not a suspect in the case or a person of interest at this time.

Pickert graduated from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, in Kansas City and had a B.A. degree in Philosophy and French in 2000, according to the bio.

He earned his law degree from the University of Kansas City Law School, where he was also a staff member of the University of Kansas Law Review. He had been a partner at the law firm he worked at before his death for 10 months, though he joined the firm in 2013, according to his LinkedIn page.

According to his bio on the law firm's website, "before entering private practice, Tom was a research attorney for the Kansas Court of Appeals and also clerked for the Honorable Steve Leben and the Honorable Janice Russell of the District Court of Johnson County, Kansas."

Pickert's wife is a doctor who works at the University of Kansas Health System. Pickert is also survived by his two sons.

The hospital released the following statement after the incident saying: "We learned earlier today that the husband of a physician at The University of Kansas Health System was killed as the result of a violent crime. We are a family at The University of Kansas Health System, and we are stunned and saddened."