Another victim

Another victim

by digby


“You know, I think people are getting tired of being abused by the situation, the way people are being. I myself am tired of it. I am victimized every time I turn around.” --- Joseph Paul Leonard

That's what this man told deputies after he chased down two back men in his car, ran over one and then got out of his car kicked him in the head with steel toed boots. The man died. This fellow is on trial for his murder.

Prosecutors say Harrison and Oliphant showed up in the parking lot of the fast-food eatery shortly afterward, “offering food to homeless people that they had obtained from a nearby hotel,” according to the trial brief filed by Deputy District Attorney Amy Holliday.

Defense attorney Danny Brace suggested in his questioning of witnesses that Harrison and Oliphant actually were panhandling and that they had stolen the food they were distributing from the morning breakfast offering for guests-only at a nearby Quality Inn.

Silva came out of the McDonald’s first and was approached by the two men. She told sheriff’s investigators that one of the two men “asked if she was hungry,” according to one deputy’s testimony. Oliphant testified at Leonard’s preliminary hearing in May that he also may have asked her for a cigarette. While he and Harrison were talking to her, Leonard emerged from the McDonald’s, “and she described that he went crazy and lost his temper,” sheriff’s Detective Pamela Linke testified at the hearing.

Linke said Silva told investigators that Leonard retrieved a chain from the back of his truck and “he was swinging it, trying to hit the boys.”

A videotape from the McDonald’s shows Harrison and Oliphant backing off while Leonard appears to be swinging the chain over his head, lasso style. He got back in his truck and drove out of view before he re-emerged in the picture, with the chain more clearly visible in his hand. He proceeded to stomp on a bicycle that had been ridden by Harrison.

Oliphant told detectives that Leonard used a racial epithet during his confrontation with the two black men.

During the fight, one of the two men threw a knife at Leonard and another threw another sharp object at him, possibly a broken bottle, the evidence showed. Pictures of Leonard taken after he was booked showed he suffered an abrasion to his midsection and a lacerated cheek that sent blood trickling down his face and onto his shirt.

A toxicology test on Harrison showed he had methamphetamine in his system. Investigators found a crank pipe in his backpack as well as shards of broken glass.

Harrison and Oliphant took off westbound on foot after the McDonald’s fight, and headed through the parking lots on the north side of Arden. Leonard, authorities said, gave chase in his truck before he tried to run over Oliphant and succeeded in ramming into Harrison in front of the Clutch Mart automotive repair shop a few businesses away from the McDonald’s.

The videotape also included Leonard’s version of events.

“This could have happened to your son if you had one out there,” Leonard told the deputy in the car. “This got too outta hand for me, man.”

Leonard, who is a mechanic by trade, said “I was in fear for my life. You see what they did to me? You make sure you include that in the report. ... I beat them off me. ... They cut me.”

At one point Leonard said, “Maybe I’m wrong.”

Yeah.

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