Free Republic

LAURENS COUNTY, S.C. -- Laurens County deputies say a woman who admitted to shooting her ex-husband will not be charged in the shooting because they believe she acted in self defense. According to the incident report, deputies were called out to a home on Vern Cora Road in Laurens Monday morning. Tammy Duvall told deputies she had a friend over at her house and was about to go outside when she heard a car door shut. Duvall told deputies she grabbed a gun and shot several times when she noticed her ex-husband, Roderick Woodruff, charging towards her. Deputies later found...

TOMPKINS COUNTY, N.Y. -- He never denied shooting his father, but Matthew Taranto said he did it in self defense. And Thursday, more than a month-and-a-half after the bench trial wrapped up, Judge Judith A. Rositer found Taranto not guilty of the crime. The 29-year-old admitted to shooting his father, Sal, in November of 2010 in their Trumansburg basement. But the defense had claimed that Taranto, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome and OCD, feared for his life after his father threatened him with a knife and gun.

The World Is Upside-Down Conservative blogger Aaron Walker was arrested today after the Maryland hearing on the Kimberlin case. The Other McCain reported: FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION Aaron Walker, whose complaint against convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin became a conservative cause célèbre this past week, was reportedly taken into custody today after a court hearing in Rockville, Maryland. One person who attended the hearing in Montgomery County District Court said that Kimberlin asserted that Walker’s continued blogging represented a violation of a “peace order” Kimberlin had obtained against the Virginia attorney, who says Kimberlin tried to “frame” him for assault earlier...

California state law guards the confidentiality of records and proceedings when peace officers face disciplinary investigations. Last month when suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi was before the Ethics Commission, his attorney Shepard Kopp was asked whether Mirkarimi would be seeking such a closed hearing and this was his response, “We do not intend to argue that these proceedings need to be private. Indeed, we think they should be public. Because I think, at the end of the day, there’s a lot of innuendo and talk about the sheriff dissuading people. The mayor’s written charges say he ‘may have’ tried to get...

NEWMAN LAKE, Wash. - A jealous ex-boyfriend broke into the Newman Lake home of his ex-girlfriend's boyfriend early Sunday morning and was shot and killed by the homeowner. Spokane County Sheriff deputies say a Honeymoon Bay homeowner was acting in self defense when he shot the armed intruder, identified late Monday afternoon by the Spokane County Medical Examiner as 43-year-old Sean M. Parsons. Parsons had been served a no-contact several hours prior to the shooting, but that didn't stop him from taking a shotgun and a pistol to Doug Snarski's Honeymoon Bay home to confront his ex-girlfriend and Snarski. Early...

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. -- A Johnson City man was arrested Sunday after police say he struck his girlfriend with a handgun. According to reports from the Johnson City Police Department, Kenneth S. Harrison, 40, of Cherokee Road was arrested on Sunday at noon and charged with Aggravated Domestic Assault. Police report that Harrison and his girlfriend got into a fight and when she attempted to run away, he grabbed her by the shirt and began to strike her in the face with a handgun. Harrison then allegedly pushed the woman to the ground and hit her several more times on...

Des Moines County prosecutors will not seek charges in connection with last month's South Central Avenue shooting death of a Macomb, Ill., man, ruling the incident as justifiable homicide or self defense. Unless new information comes in the case, police said prosecutors are standing firm in the decision not to charge anyone. Burlington Police Department detectives, along with their counterparts from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, has completed their investigation into the March 16 shooting. Their report was sent to the Des Moines County Attorney's Office. The shooter, Jacqueline Renee Williams, 28, also of Macomb, who also was shot...

A Ringgold man is recuperating from a gunshot wound after being shot in the chest by another man after the two were arguing. According to Catoosa County Sheriff’s Office reports: Robert Wilson, 37, of Ringgold, was shot in the chest Sat-urday afternoon, April 7, by a man who was doing yard work for Wilson’s next-door neighbor. The shooter, Dustin Talley of Fort Oglethorpe, was not arrested and is not currently facing any charges. Talley told police that he was acting in self-defense. Sheriff’s deputies responded to 63 Karen Drive in Ringgold about 12:45 p.m. on April 7 in regards to...

LEESBURG, FL -- A man who shot and killed his fiancee's brother was not arrested by Lake County detectives because of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law. Just like George Zimmerman, the admitted shooter Jakob Penrod hasn't been charged in this case. But the big difference is several witnesses, including some of the deceased's relatives, say Penrod did all he could to get away from the situation. Lake County deputies had been called to the Huggins Street home twice Saturday because of arguments involving the 21-year-old Penrod and his fiancee's brother Gregory Gayle, 27. “I heard a lot of arguing, I...

DORCHESTER COUNTY, SC (WCSC) - A domestic dispute ended Monday evening with a man being sent to the hospital with a gunshot wound and deputies charging him with a crime. Dorchester County sheriff's deputies were called out to Wise Road in the Twin Lakes subdivision near Summerville Monday night, to break up the fight between Christopher Brown and his wife. Deputies say Brown will be charged with criminal domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature. They say the fight started when Brown threatened to push his wife off a riding lawnmower. They say it escalated and he pushed his...

No charges will be filed against the man who fatally stabbed Donnie Scott Cohen last month. The 72-year-old man who stabbed Cohen told officers he acted in self-defense. The 7th Circuit Solicitor’s office reviewed the case and no evidence points to anything but the man’s claim of self-defense, Capt. Regina Nowak with Spartanburg Public Safety Department wrote in an email to the Herald-Journal. Police say the two men had fought prior to the stabbing. Cohen, 56, of 612-B W. St. John St., was stabbed once in the chest Feb. 27 at the home where he and the former suspect lived....

BELLEVUE, WA – The plea deal announced this morning that allows anti-gun San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi keep his guns in what began as a domestic violence case “smacks of hypocrisy at the highest order,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today. Mirkarimi pleaded guilty in San Francisco court this morning to what the San Francisco Chronicle described as “a misdemeanor charge of false imprisonment in connection with an incident in which he allegedly inflicted a bruise on his wife.” “As a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Ross Mirkarimi supported all...

OMAHA (KPTM)-A jury has found an Omaha man not guilty of murdering his daughter's ex-boyfriend. Sidney Andersen walked out of the Douglas County Courthouse a free man Friday afternoon. Prosecutors say he shot and killed Randall Grimm at an area grocery store in February 2011. Andersen's lawyer said he shot Grimm in self-defense and claimed Grimm had made threats to his family and even beat his daughter. Prosecutors say the jury found that the shooting was justified. They however believe the crime was pre-meditated since Andersen was armed with two guns and rubber gloved the night of the killing. Prosecutors...

PINEVILLE, Mo. — A McDonald County jury decided Thursday that James Patterson acted in self-defense when he shot and killed his son-in-law, Marty Reece, in Noel more than two years ago. Jurors deliberated less than three hours before acquitting Patterson, 51, of charges of second-degree murder and armed criminal action in a two-day trial in Pineville. Circuit Judge Tim Perigo had dismissed a charge of attempted murder against Patterson’s wife, Kimberly, 47, before jury deliberations began. The judge’s call and the jury’s verdict left the Pattersons obviously relieved but drew bitter reactions from the family of the 32-year-old Reece, who...

ROCKFORD (WIFR) -- Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a man tried to break into his ex-girlfriend's house last night--but instead of sweet nothings he got some gunshot wounds. 41-year-old Chauncey Williams tried to break into his ex-girlfriend's home around 10 pm Monday night. Instead of welcoming him inside, police say his ex shot at him from behind the front door. Multiple bullets hit him in the arm. Williams was let out of prison in August; he was locked up in 2006 for trying to do the same thing. He was supposed to serve a 10-year sentence, but got out...

One of my favorite political analysts surmises that one reason Mayor Ed Lee has not removed Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi from office, despite the fact he has been accused of domestic violence and witness tampering, is because Lee doesn’t want to empower the contingent of people who think Mirkarimi is being victimized because of politics. Still, people feel strongly about this issue. “Mirkarimi’s political life is finished and he should resign,” Democratic strategist Nathan Ballard told me. “He’s like Bruce Willis in “The Sixth Sense” — everybody knows that Ross Mirkarimi is dead except Ross Mirkarimi.” Ouch! Indeed, the unwillingness to...

SPARTANBURG, SC (FOX Carolina) - Deputies said they were called to an Inman residence Tuesday night after a domestic dispute led to the wife shooting her husband in self-defense. Spartanburg County deputies said they were called to the County Estates Road residence about 8:24 p.m. where they found Robert Fowler, 43, lying and screaming on the ground with a gunshot wound to the buttocks and his wife holding the gun. Deputies said they determined that Fowler got into a fight with his son, pushing him and beating him in the face, and his wife tried to separate them before shooting...

No one knows how long he sat inside the green rental car and waited. Authorities say Matthew Wong, 50, watched the door of his wife's apartment early Monday, waiting for her to step outside. Thick, black garbage bags shrouded the backseat windows. A quilt covered the rear window. "It appears it was all planned," said Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office spokesman Larry McKinnon. "He was waiting out there to ambush her." What Wong hadn't planned on, deputies said, was getting caught in the flames that he had hoped would kill his wife, Gloria Davis, 47. After residents of the Countrywood Apartments,...

Despite the impassioned pleas of Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi’s wife, a judge has renewed a court order barring him from seeing or contacting his spouse or son until his domestic abuse trial is over. “This country is trying to pull my family apart,” Eliana Lopez told Judge Susan Breall at her husband’s arraignment Thursday. “This is the real violence, I believe.” Mirkarimi, seated in the front row, quivered and wiped tears from his eyes. Prosecutors asked to extend an emergency protective order filed after Mirkarimi’s arrest last week on domestic violence battery, child endangerment and witness dissuasion charges, all misdemeanors. The...

A Wetumpka man was acquitted of a murder charge Tuesday afternoon when an Elmore County jury returned a not guilty verdict in less than two hours after the closing statements were given. Bobby Stokes, 64 at the time of the incident, was arrested and charged with murder in the 2009 shooting death of Johnny Leonard in Stokes’ home. Stokes was watching television in his 1200 block Holtville Road residence around 12:50 a.m. Dec. 16, 2009, when his common law wife Christina Walker and Leonard walked into the home, according to court records. During the trial it was revealed that Leonard...