A Lenoir County man who fired a shotgun into a plane flying over his house last year was sentenced to six months in prison Wednesday. Anthony Gene Moore, 37, of 2510 Parker Fork Road, pleaded guilty in Lenoir County Superior Court to firing a shotgun into an occupied vehicle.
The state dropped an attempted murder charge filed against Moore in exchange for the guilty plea.
Moore was arrested in March 2003.
Assistant District Attorney Imelda Pate told the court that Moore had been watching a race on television, but had trouble hearing the race because of a nearby low flying crop duster.
Don Wayne Slaughter, a 54-year-old Farmville man, was spraying pine trees when he heard three bullets striking his plane. Two passed through the plane's left wing, while a third shot penetrated the plane's belly and lodged in its battery, causing it to spew acid, Slaughter said.
Pate said he looked down and saw Moore firing a shotgun at the plane.
The damage to the aircraft, a 1986 AT 301 Air Tractor, forced Slaughter to make an emergency landing at the nearby Global TransPark.
Slaughter said if the bullet had hit just an inch away, it could have forced the plane to crash.
"I could have hit a house and killed someone else," Slaughter said. "It took me a while to get back in the air again."
Pate said deputies arrested Moore at his house not long after Slaughter's emergency landing.
Moore had been drinking and taking prescription medication at the time of the shooting, said Dal Wooten, Moore's defense attorney. Four hours after the shooting, Wooten said, Moore's blood alcohol level still registered .15, almost twice the amount considered legally drunk.
Dozens of friends and family members stood in the courtroom to show their support for Moore. Another stack of letters attesting to Moore's character was handed to Judge Paul Jones.
Wooten said the combination of personal issues and alcohol led Moore to commit such an irrational act.
"This is an example of a bad act by a good person," Wooten said.
Jones said he wasn't disputing Moore's character, but couldn't treat such a serious event lightly.
Before deputies took Moore into custody, he apologized to Slaughter while wiping a few tears from his eyes.
"I am truly sorry that this incident happened," Moore said. "I thank God every day that no one was injured."
Jones also issued a suspended sentence for Moore to run concurrently with his active prison time. Moore was placed on probation for 36 months and ordered not to drink alcohol or face an additional prison term of possibly more than three years. Jones ordered Moore to pay a $1,000 fine to the court and $4,600 in restitution to Slaughter for the damage to his plane.
Jones told Moore that he was lucky, considering what could have happened.
"You probably think that this is a sentence that will destroy your life," Jones said. "But you almost destroyed someone else's life."
Mark Lineberger can be reached at
(252) 527-3191, Ext. 251, or
Mark_Lineberger@link.freedom.com.
