There would seem to be no rational explanation for why neither law enforcement nor the family of a man fatally shot by police in his own Rossville, Ga., home was notified to be in court recently when charges were dismissed against the 66-year-old woman who made a false report to 911 - bringing the police to the innocent man's home in first place.
Police say Dorothy Marie Gass lied to a 911 dispatcher at 2:52 a.m. on Jan. 1, telling the dispatcher that her daughter-in-law, Amy Gass, had threatened to kill her children and herself. When Walker County Sheriff's deputies responded to a home in Rossville where Amy was living with her parents, they shot and killed Amy Gass' father, Mark Parkinson, who had walked into his kitchen with a handgun to see why his dogs were barking in the middle of the night
Seeing the gun, Deputy John Chandler shot through the window from the porch and killed the retired hospice nurse. (The officer has not been charged, and Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney Herbert "Buzz" Franklin will ask a grand jury on Sept. 4 to consider the facts of the shooting and decide Chandler's fate.)
At the time of the call, Amy Gass was in the middle of a custody battle with Dorothy Gass' son, Stephen. According to Dorothy Gass' arrest warrant affidavit, she told 911 she had just received a threatening call from Amy Gass, but the GBI, which is investigating the police shooting, said phone records show Amy Gass did not call Dorothy Gass that morning.
Diana Parkinson, Mark Parkinson's widow, learned about the dismissal last week when she met with Franklin. Her attorney, Jason Thompson, said Franklin appeared "embarrassed."
Likewise, there would seem to be no rational explanation for why the judge who dismissed Dorothy Gass' misdemeanor charge, along with the State Court Solicitor Pat Clements who would have prosecuted Dorothy Gass, claimed not to know the case involved a police-involved fatality.
Mullinax told Times Free Press reporter Tyler Jett on Friday: "I do hundreds of cases. That name doesn't ring a bell. I don't know anything about it." And Clements, incredulously, said to Jett: "A man ended up dead?"
Diana Parkinson's attorney aptly labeled the comments malarkey.
"That's a small county," Thompson said. "I have friends across the state who know about this case. For them to say, 'What's that? I don't know what that is.' That's a load of crap."
It would seem so. All of Walker County's population is less than 69,000 - about one sixth that of Hamilton County. This case - a false call to 911 that led to a police shooting in any size community - would be a top-of-the-mind case to a competent law enforcement agency and the personnel of the county's lower courts where the case was to be heard.
The Parkinsons are entitled to justice, not incompetence.