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A judge rejected a “Stand Your Ground” claim by Florida man accused of killing an unarmed gay man at a dog park.
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Gerald Declan Radford faces a second-degree murder charge after admitting to shooting John Walter Lay at the West Dog Park in Tampa.
But Radford immediately after claimed he acted in self-defense, and attorneys made a motion asking a judge to rule the death as a “Stand Your Ground” matter. But Judge Barbara Twine Thomas on December 12 denied the motion to dismiss the case. The judge also denied a request to consider releasing Radford from jail while awaiting a trial scheduled to begin on January 6.
Radford, before his March 8 arrest for Lay’s death, told theTampa Bay Times in a test he was defending himself. “I was attacked. I defended myself. End of story,” he told the newspaper.
But hours before Lay’s death, he sent a video to friends detailing that Radford had threatened his life. Friends of Lay say Radford had harassed him for months, including calling the gay man by the antigay f-slur on numerous occasions.
In a video made a day before Lay’s death, he said Radford had directly threatened to kill him.
“So this morning while I’m walking, and we’re the only two here, he comes up to me and tells, screams at me, ‘You’re going to die, you’re going to die,’ and I asked him to just leave me alone, and so far he has,” Lay says in the video.
Lay was killed on February, 2 but authorities did not arrest and charge Radford for more than a month after the incident.
Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law allows individuals to use deadly force if they “reasonably believe” another person is threatening to kill them or cause them great bodily harm.
