Michigan authorities have filed criminal charges against a man accused of shooting an elderly woman campaigning against abortion rights in the shoulder while she argued with his wife last week.
Richard Alan Harvey, 74, had publicly claimed it was an accident when he shot the 84-year-old woman. But prosecutors from Ionia county, Michigan, charged him on Friday with one count each of assault with felonious assault, careless discharge of a gun causing injury, and reckless use of a firearm in a case that appears to serve as an extreme example of how heated the debate surrounding abortion in the US can become.
According to investigators, the woman who was shot was volunteering with an organization named Right to Life and going door-to-door asking voters to oppose Michigan’s protecting abortion rights during a ballot measure in November when she went to Harvey’s home near Lake Odessa on 20 September.
Harvey later told the local television news station WOOD that the woman, Joan Jacobson, was arguing with his wife, who supports abortion rights. The couple told Jacobson she was trespassing and she should leave, but Jacobson refused, according to what Harvey told WOOD.
Harvey eventually emerged from a barn at his home with a .22-caliber rifle belonging to his wife, aimed at a pine tree out front and fired a warning shot. Then, “without thinking”, he said, he tried to use the rifle to “club” away a clipboard that the volunteer was holding, fearing she would hit Harvey’s wife with it.
According to Harvey, one of his fingers accidentally pulled the rifle’s trigger, and the ensuing shot hit the volunteer in the right shoulder.
“It went off,” Harvey said of the rifle he had pulled. “It was an accident.”
R&I~KC
Gellieman
Article URL : https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/01/michigan-man-charged-with-shooting-elderly-woman-in-abortion-altercation