Man Who Shot to Death Youth During Break-In Is Acquitted

CHICAGO —  In a verdict that bolsters the cause of gun rights activists, a Missouri criminal court jury has acquitted a 62-year-old farmer of second-degree murder in the shooting last December of a local teen-ager who broke into an abandoned house in farm country 75 miles west of Kansas City.

A jury in Richmond, Mo., deliberated only three hours Wednesday, then pronounced Wilbur Wilson Jr. not guilty in the killing of Travis Lineberry, a 16-year-old high school student. The jury issued its verdict after a three-day trial.

The Hale case, reminiscent of a recent controversial acquittal of a Louisiana man for shooting a Japanese student who mistakenly approached his New Orleans house, had drawn interest from gun activists across the country.

Wilson was also acquitted of a weapons violation charge and an assault on Bruce Lineberry, the dead boy’s father, in the aftermath of the shooting. If he had been convicted, Wilson could have received a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Carroll County prosecutor Mike Bradley had argued that Wilson caused Lineberry’s death by arming himself and spending four nights in a vacant house owned by his family that he suspected might be burglarized. He noted that Wilson failed to notify police or give Lineberry a warning as he was breaking into the house the night of Dec. 21.

Wilson’s defense attorney, Kevin Jamison, claimed Wilson had no choice but to fire at the teen-ager because he was nearing him in the darkened house. Even though Lineberry was unarmed, Wilson testified Monday that the youth appeared to lunge at him, provoking him to fire.

The case has divided the small town of Hale, forcing attorneys to seek a change of venue to Ray County after it became apparent there were not enough impartial Carroll County residents left to sit on a jury.

Tensions persisted during the trial. The Lineberry and Wilson families and their supporters divided the third-floor courtroom, each taking half of the wooden pews--and rarely acknowledging each other, Bradley said.

“Everybody in the family’s kind of devastated,” Cheryl Lineberry, the dead youth’s mother, said Thursday.

She added that the family would pursue a civil wrongful death lawsuit they had already filed against Wilson.