Trespassing Will Be Shot Survivors Will Be Shot Again Gta
Texas Couple to Face Murder Charge for Shotgun Blast at Motorcar that Killed Boy
Police say couple was unprovoked by passing cars when they fired fatal shots.
May xi, 2009— -- Gayle and Sheila Muhs gave trespassers a blunt warning. They posted a large sign exterior their Texas dwelling maxim trespassers would exist shot and survivors would be shot again.
They weren't joking.
The Muhs are currently being held on charges of aggravated assail for allegedly firing at to the lowest degree two shotgun blasts at a pair of packed cars that stopped exterior their rural Texas house. Those charges are expected to be upgraded to murder, since a 7-year-erstwhile boy who was wounded in the assault has died from shotgun pellets to his head and face.
But police force said the families in the two cars were driving on a public road when the Muhs opened fire from their house, killing Donald Coffey Jr. and hitting three others, including the boy's 5-year-sometime sister.
Outside the Muhs' house is a handpainted sign complete with misspelling and assertion points that warns: "Trespassers Volition Be Shot. Survivers Will Be Reshot!! Grin I Will."
Liberty County Sheriff'southward Department Chief Deputy Ken DeFoor told ABCNews.com today that the shooting was the most "violent reaction to something so blatantly, blatantly pocket-sized" he'due south always seen.
Police got a 911 call just later on nine p.one thousand. Thursday, DeFoor said, from Sheila Muhs who "reported there were people in jacked up 4-wheel automobiles ... and that she shot them." She also reported that the vehicles were destroying the nearby levees.
Only in reality, DeFoor said, the families in the two cars had washed nothing illegal. And, he said, they never set human foot on the Muhs' property.
DeFoor said the Coffey family -- mom Becky, dad Donald Sr. and their three children -- were visiting friends along with Patrick Cammack and Cindy Nelton in the Muhs' neighborhood near Dayton, Texas, about 45 miles east of Houston.
The two families had planned to become off-roading at the nearby regime-owned levees on the way home, an activity that is both popular and legal in the expanse, DeFoor said.
In the Jeep were Cammack, 30, Donald Coffey, 30 and Donald Jr., 7. In the following Ford SUV were Becky Coffey, Nelton and the Coffey's 5-twelvemonth-old daughter, Destiny, and xi-twelvemonth-old son.
The two cars stopped on the county-endemic road exterior the Muhs' dwelling so one of the boys could become to the bathroom by the side of the route.
That's when, DeFoor said, the couple ran out of their house.
"Sheila Muhs started cursing at them 'Get off our belongings,'" DeFoor said and fired off at least one circular, causing the Jeep, which had started to get out, to veer off the road.
Muhs, he said, then put the shotgun downward and chased after the Jeep on her all-terrain vehicle, eventually catching upward to it on the levee about 100 yards away, the ATVs headlights pointed at the Jeep.
While that was happening, DeFoor said Gayle Muhs picked upward the discarded shotgun and fired at the SUV. DeFoor said the trajectory of that shot showed that the back of the SUV was sprayed with pellets, it'south rear window diddled out.
"The SUV was in the procedure to flee," the officeholder said.
Nelton told the Houston Chronicle that they yelled at the Muhs after the commencement shot that they had kids in the machine and to stop shooting, but some other gunshot -- possibly more -- is all they heard in return.
Nelton said Destiny was in the dorsum of the SUV screaming.
"She said, 'Mama, they shot me. Mommy, they shot me.' There was blood all over her," Nelton told the Houston Relate.
When it was over, Destiny had been shot in the elbow, Donald Coffey Sr. in the shoulder and Cammack, who was driving the Jeep, in the base of his skull. Little Donald Coffey, nevertheless, had been hit by several shotgun pellets in the face and head.
'They Demand to Be Dead'
DeFoor said the 2 families gathered up their wounded into the SUV and raced to the nearest fire station about a mile away where medical helicopters and ambulances transported everyone to the hospital.
DeFoor said the investigation is ongoing, but police believe the Muhs may have fired as many equally four shots from the 12-guage pump shotgun, each ane spraying 15 pellets.
He chosen information technology "a total disregard for whoever may exist out at that place."
Nelton declined to speak to ABCNews.com about the shooting, saying she'south trying to have care of Cammack.
"Nosotros're all dealing with this very, very hard," she said.
She told the Houston Chronicle that she only had i wish for the Muhs. "They need to exist expressionless," Nelton told the newspaper.
Gayle Muhs is being held on $25,000 bail for one count of attack, and Sheila Muhs, who faces two counts of aggravated assault, is being held on a $525,000 bond. DeFoor said the Sheriff's Function would be submitting further data to the district chaser's role today and expects the charges to be upgraded to murder.
Stephen Taylor, the court-appointed attorney for Sheila Muhs said he had not withal spoken to his client but probably would do so this night.
"I don't know anything more than what I've read in the newspapers," he said.
The court said Gayle Muhs did not however have a lawyer.
Though Donald Coffey Jr. was pronounced dead, DeFoor said his family had kept the boy on life support while doctors prepared to transplant his organs.
Cammack, he said, had been released from the infirmary, the pellet still lodged at the base of his skull. Destiny and Donald Coffey Sr. were also treated for their wounds, he said.
DeFoor said the Muhs were known to police and accept previous arrests though neither he nor the court could say what the charges were or when.
Nearly of the people in the expanse own firearms, he said, saying that that specific neighborhood was at "lower socio-economic level."
Texas does accept a "castle" law that allows property owners to shoot if someone is trespassing on their property at night. Only that law, he said, does non utilize in this case.
While guns may have been used to settle disputes in the 1800s, he said, Texas is "not the Wild West."
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7557222&page=1