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McVay sentenced to 21-30 years in officer shooting
By Carey King
and Carey Phillips
Exiting the courtroom last Thursday (May 20), area law enforcement officers hugged each other and their families, then shook hands with jury members who’d passed down the decision they’d been hoping for.
That afternoon, the jury convicted Harold McVay, 34, of Sylva, of attempted first degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and four counts of assault with a firearm on a law enforcement officer. He was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Marlene Hyatt to a minimum of 21 and a maximum of 30 years in prison.
Sylva police, Jackson County Sheriff’s deputies, North Carolina Highway Patrol officers and their families filled nearly half of the court’s seating space to hear the fate of the man who shot Sylva Police Officer Shannon Ashe Oct. 18 and held six other officers in a standoff that lasted nearly an hour.
A bullet-proof vest has been credited with saving Ashe’s life. His injuries were not serious, but he was kept overnight at Harris Regional Hospital.
Following a 45-to-60 minute standoff with remaining officers, McVay was seriously injured in a shootout after he opened fire on them.
Prior to McVay’s sentencing, the officers were called to the stand to describe how the shooting has affected their lives.
“You made us all better police officers,” Jackson County Deputy Sheriff Matt Helton told McVay. The crisis united town, county and state law enforcement agencies into one family, several officers said.
But the officers spared McVay no harsh words as they recalled the October night.
“I went to Magnolia Street with one purpose in mind,” said N.C. Highway Patrol Officer Denny Wood. A former sniper in the U.S. Marine Corps, Wood said the only reason he did not hit McVay when McVay began to shoot was that Helton was in his line of fire.
“I do not miss,” Wood told McVay. “Had it not been for (Helton), you would not be there standing. I have never been shot at and not returned fire until that night.”
Helton called McVay “a man without a soul” and said he was not inclined to forgive him for holding his colleagues at gunpoint.
“He’s not dangerous because he’s strong and mean, as he would have us believe. He’s dangerous because he’s a coward,” Helton said.
“I hope you die in prison ... I hope you rot in a cell. The Lord forgives, but I don’t have to,” said Jackson County Deputy Blake Watson.
Ashe asked Judge Hyatt to sentence McVay to “the maximum amount allowed by law.”
The four officers who spoke were the ones McVay was found guilty of assaulting with a firearm. The jury found McVay not guilty of the same charge concerning three other officers – Jackson County deputies John Fox and Andy Parker and Sylva Police Officer Mark Bennett.
During the trial, defense attorney John Parton focused his attention on two facets of the case: whether McVay had “intent to kill” Ashe when the officer responded to the 911 dispatch call, and whether McVay fired as many shots in the ensuing standoff as officers recalled.
In what he called the “first phase” of the case, Parton said McVay did shoot Ashe as Ashe exited his patrol car to investigate a report of shots fired in a residential neighborhood. One of McVay’s upstairs neighbors had called 911 after hearing gunshots; another neighbor, Daniel Cogdill, testified that McVay had been shooting at a beer bottle and a mailbox from the porch of Cogdill’s apartment.
“I’m not suggesting Mr. McVay is not guilty of all these charges,” Parton told the jury. However, he said, it was impossible for McVay to develop “intent to kill” in the short time it took for Ashe to walk towards McVay, especially since McVay and Ashe had never met.
“All of this occurred in what, 10 seconds,” Parton said, adding that the jury should consider whether McVay’s intoxicated condition affected his ability to form specific reason to kill.
“(The prosecution is) treating him as if he were a sober person with rational thoughts about what he was going to do,” Parton said. “(But the event was) 10 seconds in a drunk man’s day.”
Parton questioned State Bureau of Investigation agents’ determination that McVay fired his gun during what he called the case’s “second phase” – the standoff that followed at the back of the house with officers who arrived after Ashe was shot.
“Had McVay fired his weapon at the back of the house at those officers, there would have been shell casings,” Parton said.
Since SBI agents found no shell casings, Parton said, there was no evidence the shots had been fired except for the testimony of the officers, whose memories varied.
“All these officers have differing stories on how many shots were fired,” Parton said. “That has to be reasonable doubt. You have to have reasonable doubt if you know the gun wasn’t fired and officers say it was.”
The prosecution contended that McVay knew exactly what he was doing when he fired at Ashe.
Prior to the shooting, McVay spoke to Cogdill in a calm, rational way, then later made sense while he negotiated with Helton, prosecutors said. McVay asked Helton to tell him Ashe’s condition and said he knew the positions of officers standing in the yard, indicating he understood what was going on, they said.
During the trial, Helton testified that he was the only officer McVay was willing to talk to during the standoff. At one point, McVay asked Helton to come inside and have a beer, he said.
“I told him I couldn’t do that until he put the gun down,” Helton said.
“I kept trying to reason with him,” he added. “I explained we weren’t going to go away, and that we had to have a resolution.”
As the standoff became more tense McVay said, “I’m going to do it,” then seconds later shoved his pistol through the glass in a storm door and began firing, Helton said. The officer said he returned fire, with McVay sustaining serious injuries that sent him to Mission Hospitals in Asheville.
“Just because a person drinks doesn’t mean that their actions in committing a crime are justified or excused,” District Attorney Mike Bonfoey told the jury.
“If you point a gun at somebody and pull the trigger, you have only one thing on your mind. You’re going to kill him,” said Assistant District Attorney Roy Wijewickrama.
The prosecutors argued that McVay had ample time to decide to kill Ashe.
“Premeditation can be formed in a matter of seconds,” Wijewickrama said. “It doesn’t have to take days, it doesn’t have to take weeks, it doesn’t have to take hours.”
“During that time, McVay’s mind started weighing his options and he decided to kill Shannon Ashe,” Bonfoey said.
They also disputed Parton’s argument about the missing shell casings.
“The collection of evidence is not a perfect science. Those shell casings could have gone anywhere,” Bonfoey said.
“I don’t expect the officers to get up there and tell the exact same story (about how many shots McVay fired). When these officers were getting shot at, given everything that happened that day, they weren’t sitting there counting muzzle flashes,” Wijewickrama said.
After the verdict was read, Parton asked Judge Hyatt to consider McVay’s personal history when deciding his sentence.
“He hasn’t had the advantages that many of us have,” Parton said. “He’s always been on the outside edge.”
Raised by a single mother after his father left when he was 2 years old, McVay has had a “tremendous” alcohol problem and bouts of depression throughout his life, leading to two DWI convictions, a number of public intoxication charges, a failed marriage and children that are estranged from him, Parton said. He has worked a series of minimum wage jobs and has twice tried to commit suicide. Since moving to Sylva about five years ago to be with his sister, the shooting was his first run-in with law enforcement, Parton said.
While Parton asked for leniency, Wijewickrama petitioned the judge for the harshest sentence possible.
“That was a horrible, horrible day that could have easily turned into one of the deadliest days in Jackson County’s history,” Wijewickrama said. “We are very grateful that Shannon Richard Ashe is still with us.”
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