Soldier jailed after suicide call says he accidentally shot at cops, NC lawsuit says
A former soldier at Fort Bragg in North Carolina called a suicide hotline in duress one night in 2017 before his gun “accidentally discharged” in the direction of responding police officers, according to court filings.
He spent the next two years and 11 months in jail.
Gerard Atkinson was eventually released on lesser charges following a plea deal in late 2019. Now he’s suing the City of Fayetteville and several police officers for claims of wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution, among others, according to court documents filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina.
“What started out as a cry for help by him on a cold winter night because he was suicidal resulted in false charges of attempted murder,” attorney Michael Porter said in a lawsuit removed to federal court earlier this month.
The city and police officers asked the court to dismiss the case Tuesday.
“The officers responded in a lawful manner and they had probable cause for the arrest as determined by a neutral magistrate judge,” defense attorney James C. Thornton with Cranfill Sumner & Hartzog LLP told McClatchy News. “We feel like the allegations in the complaint are inaccurate and incomplete.”
At the time of the incident, Atkinson was stationed at Fort Bragg as a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army and served as an intelligence analyst, Porter told McClatchy News in an email. He was reportedly discharged while in jail.
The then 29-year-old soldier was home alone on Jan. 6, 2017, and had been drinking when he began experiencing suicidal thoughts because of “troubles with his military career and troubles in his marriage,” according to the complaint.
He sought help from a veteran’s suicide hotline, who in-turn called the police, the lawsuit states.
But Atkinson wasn’t aware the police had been called, Porter said in the complaint. He decided to try to go to sleep thinking “no one was coming to help him” and went to put down his gun when it “accidentally discharged,” the lawsuit states.
Three officers with the Fayetteville Police Department were outside at the time, according to court filings.
In a 2017 Facebook post detailing the incident, police said the responding officers were “establishing a perimeter at the residence when they suddenly heard a gunshot fired from inside of the home.”
The bullet “struck a tree near the officers,” the post states.
Atkinson was taken into custody “without further incident” and charged with three counts of attempted first degree murder and three counts of assault on a government official with a firearm, police said. A Cumberland County magistrate judge issued a warrant for his arrest the following day, finding Atkinson had “deliberately discharged a .45 caliber handgun at officers,” according to court filings accompanying the officers’ motion to dismiss Tuesday.
A district court judge agreed to raise Atkinson’s bond from $150,000 to $600,000 on Jan. 9, 2017, police said in a follow-up Facebook post.
Porter, Atkinson’s attorney, told McClatchy “the bail was set so high that he could not post it.”
Atkinson spent the next 1,065 days in jail awaiting a resolution to the charges through his public defender, who he reportedly did not hear from for months at a time, Porter said in the lawsuit.
“But for a new public defender being assigned to the plaintiff’s case in November 2019 (she secured his release within 30 days), the plaintiff would still be facing false charges, and be wrongfully imprisoned at the Cumberland County Jail in a state of legal purgatory,” the complaint states.
Atkinson pleaded guilty to violating a city ordinance that bars discharging a weapon in city limits and resisting, delaying or obstructing a public officer on Dec. 4, 2019, according to court filings.
The charges carried a maximum punishment of 60 days in prison and a $50 fine, the guilty plea states.
He is suing the city of Fayetteville and police officers for malicious prosecution, false imprisonment, violations of the Fourth Amendment for unreasonable seizure, intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress and defamation.
But defense attorneys said the lawsuit has no merit in a motion to dismiss Tuesday, pointing to the government’s immunity, probable cause for Atkinson’s arrest as evidenced by the magistrate judge’s arrest warrant and his guilty plea as well as a one-year statute of limitations barring his claims for defamation.
“Plaintiff assisted the North Carolina state courts in entering a criminal judgment against him that, by necessity, finds that plaintiff’s discharge of his weapon from his house ... towards the defendant officers was not ‘accidental,’ but instead unlawful and intentional,” the motion states.
This story was originally published July 21, 2020 at 6:28 PM with the headline "Soldier jailed after suicide call says he accidentally shot at cops, NC lawsuit says."
