IONIA COUNTY, MI – A retired Lake Odessa man has been charged in the shooting of an 84-year-old Right to Life volunteer outside of his home.
Richard Harvey, 74, is accused of shooting Joan Jacobson in the shoulder Sept. 20 with a .22-caliber rifle while Jacobson and Harvey’s wife were engaged in an argument.
Jacobson, who did not require hospitalization, was going door-to-door asking people to oppose Proposal 3, an initiative to guarantee the right to abortion in Michigan.
Related: ‘I was stunned, absolutely,’ says 84-year-old pro-life advocate shot while door-to-door canvassing
Harvey was arraigned Friday, Sept. 30, in Ionia County District Court on charges of assault with a dangerous weapon, or felonious assault, a four-year felony, careless discharge causing injury, a two-year high-court misdemeanor and reckless use of a firearm, a 90-day misdemeanor.
Magistrate Mandy Sanderson asked Harvey, who appeared via video link to the Ionia County Jail, if he understood the charges.
“I think so,” he said.
Joan Jacobson was shot in the shoulder on Sept. 20 while canvassing in the Lake Odessa area, asking resident to vote against Proposal 3 on the November ballot (Photo contributed by David Kallman)
She ordered Harvey held on $10,000 bond and said he can have no contact with Jacobson or her family if released.
Prosecutor Kyle Butler said in court that Jacobson was going door-to-door talking to residents about Proposal 3 when she and Harvey’s wife had a loud argument.
Related: Right to Life of Michigan volunteer shot while canvassing, organization claims
Harvey was in an outbuilding and heard the two arguing. He walked over with the rifle and asked Jacobson to leave. She apparently didn’t leave as quickly as Harvey wanted, Butler said.
Harvey fired a warning shot into a tree, he said.
The argument between the women continued. Harvey, with his finger on the rifle’s trigger, allegedly used the rifle to push a clipboard Jacobson had in her hand when the gun fired.
Harvey thought Jacobson would hit his wife with the clipboard, the prosecutor said.
The bullet struck the victim in her right shoulder and came out through her back. Jacobson drove to the Lake Odessa police station before she was treated in a hospital emergency room.
The defendant and his wife called 911 and provided a lengthy statement, Butler said.
All of the those involved cooperated with the state police investigation, the prosecutor said.
Harvey has no previous criminal record. He turned himself in Friday after the prosecutor filed charges.
The magistrate said that if he posts bond he cannot possess a firearm.
At the close of the hearing, Harvey asked: “Who is Joan Jacobson?”
“The victim in this case,” Sanderson told him.
“Thank you,” he said.
In an interview on Thursday, Jacobson told MLive/The Grand Rapids Press that she was “stunned, absolutely,” to have been shot.
“I was thinking, ‘Did he really shoot me?’”
She felt intense pain in her back, she said.
She said she was not aggressive or loud in her discussion with Harvey’s wife. She said she was leaving, with the other woman walking behind her, when she was shot. She did not feel threatened by the wife, she said.
Jacobson, a retired nurse, has volunteered for Right to Life since the 1990s.
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Man, 74, charged in shooting of Right to Life volunteer, 84 - MLive.com
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