BEAR PAW
Civil suit not quick
Jason Kloepfer, who was severely injured in a 2022 police shooting at his home, won’t see a resolution to his civil suit until August 2025 at the earliest, according to a recent filing in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, smokymountainnews.com reported.
The lawsuit, filed in June 2023, named 31 defendants representing the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office and Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ Cherokee Indian Police Department. A December ruling whittled that list of defendants down to 29 people or entities who are together facing more than 200 claims that could be worth millions of dollars.
On Feb. 8, U.S. Magistrate Judge W. Carleton Metcalf issued a scheduling order that lays out a timeline toward the lawsuit’s conclusion. Reports from expert witnesses are due on Aug. 30 for the plaintiffs and Oct. 25 for the defendants, with discovery to be complete by Feb. 4, 2025, and mediation by Feb. 21, 2025.
Should the case go to trial, it’s expected to take eight days to adjudicate and is scheduled for the first available session beginning on or after Aug. 4, 2025.
The shooting took place on Dec. 13, 2022, after a neighbor called 911 claiming she was concerned that Kloepfer had hurt his wife, Alison Mahler, and threatened the whole neighborhood. Citing a potential hostage situation, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office requested assistance from the Cherokee Indian Police Department’s SWAT team, which eventually fired their weapons at him, severely injuring him and narrowly missing Mahler.
SYLVA
Gun shots lead to jail
A Glenville man, angered by neighbors’ target practice who afterward fired four times into their residence, is in state custody serving active prison time, District Attorney Ashley Welch said.
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Two weeks ago, Jackson County jury members found Gene Allen Leopard, 64, guilty of four counts discharging firearm into an occupied dwelling. The shooting occurred on April 28, 2018.
At the time, three people were in the home: the couple who own the residence and a friend of the husband who had participated earlier in target practice.
The men were in the living room, watching a car race on television. The woman was in the kitchen after tearing off paper towels to clean up a not-yet-totally-housebroken puppy’s mistake. Suddenly, the victims testified, the windows “exploded.”
Only the two occupied rooms were lighted – indicating, prosecutors argued, that Leopard fired deliberately toward the occupants. The victims told jury members that the experience had been terrifying.
They also said they had conducted target practice – with no neighbor problems – for the previous six years, firing into a mountain bank near their residence.
Superior Court Judge Tom Locke sentenced Leopard to serve a total minimum active prison service of 102 months up to a total maximum of 148 months.
From staff reports.