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Michael Hetle also threatened to shoot the victim’s wife, who witnessed the shooting.
Michael Hetle, a former NASA employee who allegedly used a racial slur against his mixed-race neighbor, has been found guilty of shooting the man dead.
Hetle, 52, shot Javon Prather, 24, seven times and threatened to shoot his wife who witnessed the killing, PEOPLE reports. Prather and Hetle, a white former police officer and NASA executive, have apparently clashed over issues such as loud music, dog poop, and drinking since 2016.
Hetle’s Ring doorbell camera captured the March 3, 2020 incident. Prather was standing on Hetle’s porch and knocking on the door at the time, local news outlet WTOP reports. Hetle allegedly boiled over with anger when local police and the Maryland National Guard failed to act on his complaints about Prather, The Washington Post reports. According to Hetle’s attorney, George L. Freeman IV, his client believed Prather was armed when he showed up on his doorstep.
Freeman argued that firing six rounds at Prather while he tried to run away was self-defense. Several neighbors witnessed the killing, including Prather’s wife, Janelle Prather. After Prather collapsed on Hetle’s driveway, he fired again before threatening to shoot Prather’s wife.
“You want it too?” Hetle asked her, according to the Post.
Prosecutors said Hetle’s actions were “not self-defense, that it was murder in the first degree, which is murder with malice and murder with premeditation.”
“He didn’t want Javon hurt,” Fairfax County prosecutor Lyle Burnham said during the trial. “He didn’t want Javon to leave. He wanted Javon dead.”
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Article URL : https://news.yahoo.com/ex-nasa-employee-convicted-murdering-172500904.html