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Liberty shooting trial nears end
The alleged shooting capped off a longstanding neighborhood feud.
LIBERTY — A jury will likely spend part of today deliberating the case of a former Liberty Township man charged with two counts of aggravated menacing in a purported 2008 shooting.
Dennis Bryan, 49, of Cortland, formerly of Lucretia Drive, is on trial because police said he fired a shot from a handgun that caused two Lucretia Drive women to run in fear. Bryan and one of the women, 32-year-old Jennifer Sehon, are members of families that had been feuding for years.
Township police have files dating back to 2004 detailing the dispute between the families.
After the purported shooting, township officers removed numerous guns from the Bryan residence including a rifle resting on a two-legged stand near an upstairs window, reports said.
A jury consisting of three women and six men listened to testimony Wednesday from Lucretia Drive residents, members of the Bryan family and township police Officer Robert Altiere in Girard Municipal Court. Closing arguments and jury deliberation is expected to take place today.
Sehon told the court she and neighborhood friend Carrie Lara were walking past the Bryan home one evening in May 2008 when she noticed Bryan sitting at a picnic table with his wife, Joyce. She said a handgun was on a table next to the couple.
Sehon said she saw Bryan pick up the firearm, aim it in her direction and fire one shot into the air. She and Lara ran to a neighbor’s house, she told the court.
“I was absolutely terrified,” she said. “I will never forget that moment in all my life. I was shaking for three or four days.”
Lara told the court she remembers walking down Lucretia with Sehon and hearing the gunshot, but she did not see Bryan with a firearm.
Several residents in the neighborhood testified that they had heard the gunfire. Some testified that they had interacted with the two terrified women immediately after the shooting.
Atty. James Gentile, representing Bryan, told the jury that the ongoing dispute in the neighborhood caused his client to put surveillance cameras around his home and eventually leave the residence all together.
Gentile showed the jury a tape of the women walking taken by the surveillance cameras.
Bryan’s wife and 22-year-old son, David, told the court that Bryan did not fire the gunshot in question. They said the gunshot scared their family as much as any other member of the neighborhood.
Joyce and David Bryan said their family was relaxing in the backyard and went inside once they heard the shot, which sounded like it came from a wooded area nearby. They both said they then heard a commotion at the front door of the house and called police.
Altiere told the court about the firearms taken from the house after the shooting, including a black handgun that he said appeared to have been recently fired. He also said Bryan refused to submit to a gunshot residue test saying that he had been target practicing earlier that day.
jgoodwin@vindy.com