Judge: Teenager fired in self defense

Tears welled in their eyes after the ruling Wednesday as the teenage boy rested his forehead against his mother’s.

The 15-year-old acted in self defense on the September night when he fired pistol blasts at his mother’s boyfriend, Augusta County Judge Charles L. Ricketts III found. She testified that she handed her son the weapon and instructed him not to let the man inside.

Gary Wayne Ralston, 54, of Waynesboro, was critically wounded in the shooting outside the home where the boy and his siblings and mother live just north of town. Ralston survived.

Authorities charged the teenager with malicious wounding and use of a firearm in commission of a felony.

But after three hours of emotional testimony, Ricketts said, “I’ve got to go with the evidence, and it has to be from the eyes of the defendant.”

More than 10 people took the stand, including the teen’s mother, who said Ralston ignored her request earlier that evening to stay away from her home.

The mother described Ralston as abusive, controlling and jealous of the time she spent with her children.

Defense attorney Thomas Weidner played an audio recording of a telephone conversation that he said took place between the mother and Ralston less than an hour before the shooting.

In the recording, Ralston threatened to spread pornographic photos of the woman if she didn’t return to his house.

“Get back here now!” Ralston ordered. “If I don’t hear that truck start, then I’m coming. Don’t trifle with me!”

Ralston then cursed and threatened the woman and her four “rug rats.”

Ricketts later called the recording “one of the most gruesome tapes of a conversation I’ve ever heard.”

The woman testified she locked the gate to her driveway, but fell into a frenzy when she heard the sound of Ralston’s car approaching. She said she handed her son a Glock .45 handgun.

“What did you instruct [the teen] to do?” Weidner asked.

“Don’t let him in the house,” the woman answered.

The boy didn’t.

Augusta County Sheriff’s Office Investigator George Cox said that the teen watched as Ralston pulled up and then hopped over the locked gate.

Standing alone in the dark, the boy listened to the “quick steps” of Ralston making his way along the gravel drive toward the front porch.

Inside, the mother pleaded with police dispatchers to send help.

“He’s crossed over my gate! He’s coming here to kill me! Come quickly!” she said.

Outside, the teen pointed the gun at Ralston and three times ordered him to leave, Cox said, citing his interview with the boy.

The investigator then repeated the teen’s recollection of Ralston’s response: “‘Go ahead and shoot me. I’ve killed more people than you can imagine.’”

As Ralston stepped onto the porch, the teen fired three times, hitting the man in the back, leg and arm. The shots knocked Ralston to the ground where he cursed as he lay bleeding heavily, authorities said.

The boy’s mother screamed into the phone: “My son just shot him! My son just shot him!”

Listening to the 911 call in court, the woman cried into a handkerchief.

Ralston took the stand, but only briefly.

Peering across the courtroom beneath a shock of gray, slicked-back hair, he declined to testify, asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Corey Smith asked the judge to order two years of probation for the teen.

“Your Honor, what we have here is a very bad situation,” Smith said. “I heard [Ralston] cuss [the mother] like a dog, but I did not hear him say, ‘I’m coming there to kill you.’”

He argued the teen intended to shoot Ralston.

“She tells her son, ‘Don’t let him into the house,’” Weidner said. “He’s 15 years old – [Ralston] put his foot on the porch. What do you do?”

Several people in the gallery applauded the ruling. As the teen stood to face his mother, a crowd closed in on him, shaking his hand and rubbing his shoulders.

Several people cried.

“He really is a good kid,” Weidner said.