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FBI shooting suspect will stay in prison

PITTSBURGH — A woman was ordered jailed until trial on charges she fatally shot an FBI agent after prosecutors on Monday played expletive-laced jailhouse phone recordings in which she acknowledged using cocaine and complained that a newspaper ran a photo sympathetic to the agent.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Mitchell found probable cause to support the arrest warrant for Christine Korbe, 40, of Glenshaw, meaning prosecutors have 30 days to get a grand jury indictment on murder and weapons charges in the shooting of Special Agent Samuel Hicks.

Hicks and seven other law enforcement officers raided Korbe's home outside Pittsburgh about an hour before dawn on Nov. 19 to arrest her husband, Robert, on drug trafficking charges.

Hicks was first to enter. Authorities said that, while Robert Korbe ran away so he could flush cocaine down the toilet, Christine Korbe fired a single shot from a .38-caliber revolver that hit Hicks just above his bulletproof vest, killing him.

Defense attorney John Elash has maintained Christine Korbe is "extremely remorseful" for shooting Hicks, and did so because she didn't know police were raiding her home and feared for her children.

Prosecutors contend the officers loudly announced who they were. They said Robert Korbe acknowledged police were at the door, so there was no reason his wife would think they were being burglarized.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy Rivetti told Mitchell during Korbe's detention hearing Monday in Pittsburgh that Korbe "is not the person she claims to be."

"She is not the PTA mom, she is not the pillar of the community," he said.

To bolster his case, he played taped excerpts from more than a dozen profanity-filled jailhouse phone conversations. In one, Korbe recounted telling another inmate, "Don't think because I'm a soccer mom that I won't ... sock it to (you)." In another, she told a relative that she planned to be on Oprah Winfrey's show after her release. In another, she says she got asked for her autograph twice in one day.

In a call to her sister, Korbe complained about a newspaper picture that showed Hicks with his wife and 2-year-old son. Korbe told her sister to give the newspaper a picture of Korbe holding her daughter.

"So they're getting all that public sympathy with him and his family, but what about my family?" she says.

Elash argued the taped excerpts were taken out of context. He says Korbe is what four of her friends described her to be on the witness stand: a devoted mother who is active in the community and a kind, compassionate friend.

Elash contrasted "the person she was outside the county jail and the person she had to become to survive in the county jail."

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