Peter Bernardo Spencer.Photo: GoFundMe
But earlier this month, the case took a turn when Venango County District Attorney Shawn White announced thathe would not be filing criminal chargesin the killing, asserting that evidence supports the shooter acting out of self-defense, which is justified under Pennsylvania’s “stand your ground” law.
White said that Spencer, 29, ingested hallucinogenic mushrooms and smoked marijuana the night of the shooting. (An autopsy report confirmed the presence of psilocybin — which is found in psychedelic mushrooms — in addition tofentanyl, which suggests that the drugs were laced with the potent drug.)
Witnesses told investigators that Spencer began acting irrationally, firing dozens of rounds from an illegally obtained AK-47 assault rifle. White alleged Spencer’s voice started getting louder, and he shouted that he “was a god” and “creator, master and manipulator of his own reality.” When an unidentified man tried finding firewood, Spencer allegedly ordered him at gunpoint to kneel on the ground, to which he reportedly complied.
Spencer at one point threatened to “shoot up the place,” White said, aiming his gun at his co-worker. It was then that the co-worker allegedly grabbed his 9 mm pistol and repeatedly shot Spencer.
The DA’s decision not to charge the shooter was met with criticism from Spencer’s family, whose lawyer has argued that the witness testimonies are unreliable and autopsy results raise doubt about how the incident actually played out.
“One of the strange things about the district attorney’s statement was that it was contradictory in a number of ways,” Paul Jubas, an attorney representing the Spencer family, said at a news conference Monday. “The district attorney was saying that the suspect was credible, but he did point out during the question and answer section that the suspect was caught lying during the investigation.”
The shooter initially told authorities he had also taken psychedelic mushrooms on the night of the incident, but Jubas says that psilocybin and fentanyl weren’t found in the shooter’s system, seemingly damaging his credibility.
Jubas brought Dr. Cyril Wecht, a high-profile pathologist, to the news conference to unpack the autopsy results. The autopsy determined that four bullets pierced Spencer’s front side and five bullets pierced his back side — if only one shooter is involved, Wecht says that shows evidence that Spencer turned away from the shooter yet continued being attacked.
“Where is this fear on the part of the shooter that he is being threatened?” Wecht said, questioning the man’s self-defense claim. “Five shots at Mr. Spencer while he is moving away from the shooter, and the shooter is continuing to shoot.”
White had explained the back wounds as a result of Spencer spinning while falling, not a result of him running away. Wecht questioned how someone could definitively conclude that based on bullet wounds alone, and opined that even if it were the case, it doesn’t change his belief that a shooter acting in self-defense should not have needed to fire his weapon nine times.
“Sometimes my colleagues try to reconstruct things to the point of absurdity,” Wecht said, “and that is something I do not do.”
Without explicitly drawing conclusions, Jubas also noted that one of the bullets fired at Spencer remains unaccounted for, claiming that it did not create an exit wound and therefore should be lodged in his body. During an independent examination, he said, the bullet could not be located. “Bullets don’t disappear,” he added, again questioning the legitimacy of the county’s investigation.
Despite the county DA’s decision not to charge the shooter in Spencer’s death, a federal investigation into possible criminality remains ongoing, giving the victim’s family hope that their suspicions will be explored.
“The family is completely confident in the federal investigation,” Jubas said, adding that his clients are fully cooperating with investigators. “We do expect and believe that an indictment will be forthcoming on the suspect from that investigation.”
White did not return PEOPLE’s request for comment on Jubas and Wecht’s claims.
source: people.com
