A Tennessee district attorney ruled that a man will not face charges after fatally shooting 24-year-old Dalton Spaulding outside a Gray smoke shop in August. The altercation began when Spaulding accused the man of disrespectfully looking at his grandfather, then threw him to the ground, detaching his prosthetic leg during the continued assault.
The District Attorney General’s office determined Spaulding was the primary aggressor, citing witness statements and surveillance video supporting a self-defense finding. The man fired four shots, three of which struck Spaulding in the chest and arm, resulting in his death at the scene. The shooter has not been publicly identified.
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GRAY, TN — A man who was thrown to the ground and had his prosthetic leg detached during a fight outside a Gray smoke shop in August will not face charges for the four shots he fired, District Attorney General Steve Finney’s office announced Tuesday. The man who attacked him, 24-year-old Dalton Spaulding, was found dead in the parking lot outside A1 Smoke and Vape.
Finney’s office concluded that Spaulding was the primary aggressor in the altercation, as reported by WCYB. The First Judicial District Attorney General’s release, as reported by WJHL, says the Johnson City Police Department investigation found the confrontation started when Spaulding accused the man of looking at Spaulding’s grandfather in a disrespectful manner.
A look. That is what this started over.
The accusation turned physical. Spaulding threw the man to the ground. The impact detached the man’s prosthetic leg. The fighting continued. The man fired four rounds. Three struck Spaulding in the chest and arm, according to WJHL. Spaulding died there in the parking lot.
I keep coming back to the disparity here. A man with a prosthetic leg is on the pavement, and the leg he needs to stand up, retreat, or even square up to defend himself is no longer attached to his body. A 24-year-old who has already thrown him down is still coming. There is no running from that position, and there is no fair fight from that position either. The attacker holds every physical advantage, and the man on the ground has exactly one way to end it.
Finney said multiple witness statements and surveillance video supported the finding that the man acted in self-defense. Those two kinds of evidence matter more than anything the shooter could have said for himself. Independent witnesses and a camera put the sequence on the record without relying on the defender’s own account, and that is what let the DA’s office make a clean call.
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The man who fired has not been publicly identified. He will not be charged.
Spaulding is dead at 24 over a perceived slight to his grandfather. Nobody in that parking lot needed to be there for any of it, and the one person who had no way to leave is the one who walked away without charges.
