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This would be funny if it weren't so sad ... and stupid

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!, Sep 14, 2007.

  1. Wife of man who shot 11-year-old son takes stand

    Bluefield Daily Telegraph

    PRINCETON, W.Va — A Mercer County jury heard opening statements and witnesses’ testimonies Thursday in the trial of a Bluewell man who shot his 11-year-old son while installing a television cable.
    Joe Gore I, 32, was arrested March 1 and charged with wanton endangerment and involuntary manslaughter. When a drill bit was not long enough to go through the floor of his family’s Lorton Lick Road home, he used a 9mm pistol to finish the hole. The single shot hit his son, Joe Gore II, in the head.
    Gore told investigators at that time that he had told his son to stay in the house, but the boy had instead gone outside and under the trailer.
    “This is a tragic and peculiar case,” Assistant Prosecuting Attorney George Sitler told the jury. “Mr. Gore made a tragically poor decision.”
    Gore was installing a cable in his children’s bedroom when he discovered that his drill bit was not large enough for the job, Sitler said. Instead of going to a hardware store or trying to borrow a longer drill but, he used his father’s 9mm handgun to get the hole through the floor.
    Sitler said he was presenting the prosecution’s case “more like an inquest” since many of the facts were not being disputed.
    “You have to decide whether Mr. Gore was acting in wanton disregard for the consequences of his actions,” he said.
    Defense attorney Joe Harvey said the shooting “was an accident, a tragic accident that Joe Gore relives every day.”
    “We are not going to be arguing over the facts,” Harvey said. “What you have to decide is how to apply the law in this case.”
    Gore repeatedly told his son, also known as J.J., to stay next to the living room’s coal stove while the shot was being fired, Harvey said.
    “Why did J.J. go back under the house? One reason was that he was an 11-year-old boy, and he was scared that he wasn’t going to be able to help,” Harvey said.
    Gore’s wife, Crystal Gore, testified that she heard her husband tell J.J. “four times” to stay by the stove. She said that she was helping her other two children set up a video game in the living room when the shot was fired.
    “We all knew what he [Gore] was going to do,” she said, adding later that Gore did not call out to see if all the children were indoors before firing the shot.
    “I was my responsibility to keep them there,” Crystal Gore said, crying.
    The trial is scheduled to continue 9 a.m. today before Judge Bill Sadler.
     
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