Posted on 03/13/2014 2:05:11 PM PDT by DJ Taylor
The shooting in the Gates Four neighborhood sounds to me like a case of very bad judgment by both parties involved.
A female friend told me that two women would never have gotten involved in this mess. I agree.
Unchecked testosterone is written all over this one, if we are to believe the accounts of the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office, which is still investigating.
Ronnie Mitchell, the department's legal adviser, said at a news conference Wednesday that the sheriff would probably not pursue felony charges, though lesser charges might be considered. The "serious injury" required for a felony assault charge befell the alleged shooter, not the victim, he said.
According to Mitchell, and sheriff's office reports, this is what happened:
Gerald Hilton Lord, 48, was delivering food to a home in Gates Four for GoWaiter.com, an online restaurant delivery service. Lord, a veteran, pulled into the wrong driveway on Towbridge Court.
He lingered there, while apparently checking directions on his phone. Thomas Earl Jacobs, 18, ordered Lord off of the property he shares with a guardian.
Words were exchanged. Lord, who is black, said Jacobs hurled racial slurs at him. Jacobs is white.
Mitchell said it is "unclear" whether Jacobs used a slur, and said investigators will interview him about the incident.
Lord delivered his order at a home across the street, then walked back into Jacobs' driveway. He said Jacobs had a baseball bat; Jacobs denies having it at the time Lord returned, but said he had produced one earlier.
Lord aimed the gun at Jacobs, and the two men tussled. Jacobs "picked him up and body-slammed him," Mitchell said.
That caused the semi-automatic gun to fire twice, striking Lord in the forearm. Jacobs had a slight neck injury, either from a bullet grazing him or from his neck touching the hot gun barrel.
Lord was transported to Womack Army Medical Center, Jacobs to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center. Neither man's injury is life-threatening.
If this account is correct, Lord bears the most responsibility in this dust-up, and it's not even close. Like Florida's George Zimmerman, he is the older, gun-toting man who forced a confrontation with a teenager, who just happened to be able to fight. It is only fate that we don't have another dead person on our hands. You could say Lord was saved from a potential prison stint or the cemetery by that other Lord.
The question I have is why he didn't just get in his car and drive away after delivering his order.
Mitchell's account provides a clue. If Lord, a middle-aged man who had served his country, had been slurred by this youngster - well that would be the kind of thing that could send a person over the edge.
I put it this way: For a non-black person to call a black person a racial slur to his face is equivalent to slapping that black person in the face. What happens next is anybody's guess.
That does not excuse Lord from pulling a gun, as accounts state.
But neither man apparently had his finest hour in Gates Four that day, and both are lucky the outcome wasn't worse.
a word is a word....the so called "n" word is just a take off from a legit word which is derived from an actual country....
too bad if some don't like it....there's lots I don't like too, but we just pull up our big boy/big girl pants and stop letting petty things be an excuse for violence...
We’re talking about the town outside the gates at Ft. Bragg. Fayetteville is called Fayettnam by Soldiers who have been stationed there. Fayettnam is a little version of Atlanta. It’s a freakin ghetto, hole. There are always shootings happening. Hate the town, like the fort.
You are welcome to your opinion of this area.
Gates Four is a gated golf community. All of the homes have the same mailbox. A big wooden one with a wood plate under it with a green center and the house number in the middle of that.
There is no mistaking a location. And it’s downright rude to pull into someone’s driveway and start making phone calls.
With that said they were both idiots.
Oh, by the way, the modern soldier who doesn’t like the town calls it Fayettestan.
Back in the day, we called it Fayettenam. Time marches on...
Yep, Fort Bragg might as well be named Fort Apache.
I was there “back in the day” and still am.
Married a Carolina girl who refused to move.
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