Assault charge dismissed in Coffee County Court

An assault charge against a New Brockton man arrested in connection with a 2017 incident in the parking lot of the Waffle House in Enterprise has been dismissed.

In a ruling issued Monday, Feb. 24, Twelfth Judicial Circuit Judge Sonny Reagan dismissed the first-degree charge against Joshua Clayton Ward.

Ward has been free on $20,000 bond following his Nov. 24, 2017 arrest after a 4:26 a.m. shooting that occurred in the restaurant parking lot.

At the time of the incident Enterprise Police Department Public Information Officer Lt. Billy Haglund said that the shooting was apparently the result of a verbal and physical altercation that began inside the restaurant in the early morning hours of Nov. 24, 2017.

Haglund said that the verbal and physical altercation between Ward and James Forte continued in the parking lot. “During the altercation in the parking lot, the suspect pulled a handgun and fired a single shot striking the victim in the leg,” he said.

At a Motion to Dismiss hearing before Reagan Feb. 20, Ward told the court that while he was eating at Waffle House, an argument ensued with Forte, who knocked Ward to the floor before leaving the building.

Ward said he “got on my feet, paid for my meal and asked the waitress to call the police.” Ward said that he went outside the building to wait for the police officer’s arrival and saw that Forte was still outside.

Ward said when he told Forte that the police were on their way, Forte attacked him with such force that it knocked him against a wall, striking him in the head with a metallic object until he was rendered temporarily unconscious.

Twelfth Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorney Jon Folmar asked Ward why he had provoked the attack by talking to Forte outside the building. “I felt morally obligated to tell him that the police were on the way,” the Operation Iraqi Freedom Marine Corps veteran replied.

Ward said that he shot Forte once in the leg in an effort to ward off the attacker. “My intent was not to kill,” Ward said. “I told him if he didn’t stop, I’d have to shoot him again.”

Ward said that during the altercation inside the restaurant, which was broken up by other people, he heard a person tell Forte to retrieve his pistol from his vehicle. “I had good reason to believe my life was in danger,” Ward said as he described Forte reaching into his vehicle and pacing in the parking lot prior to the attack.

When Forte took the witness stand, the former soldier told the court that the incident inside the Waffle House had been “service members arguing about nothing.” He said that he did keep a pistol on the floor board of his vehicle but that although he had reached inside the vehicle, he did not take the pistol out of the vehicle. He said also that he had remained in the parking lot, pacing, because he was waiting for friends who were still in the restaurant.

“He kept talking crap,” is why Forte said he attacked Ward.

Folmar asked Ward why he didn’t just walk away from Forte. “If I walked away, I would have been struck from behind,” he replied.

“Stand your ground,” interjected Ward’s attorney Paul Young. “That is the very issue here.”

In Young’s Motion to Dismiss the case, he cited the Alabama’s Self Defense/Defense of Others law that, in part, states, “A person is justified in using physical force upon another person in order to defend himself or herself or a third person from what he or she reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of unlawful physical force by that other person and he or she may use a degree of force which he or she reasonablly believes to be necessary for the purpose.”

At the start of the Feb. 20 hearing, Young and Folmar told the court that they agreed to agree that Ward was not engaged in any unlawful activity at the time of the incident; that Ward was in a place he had a legal right to be at the time of the incident; that Ward was not the initial aggressor at the time of the incident; and that Ward had withdrawn from an initial confrontation between the parties inside the Waffle House.

Young and Folmar also agreed to disagree about whether Ward “provoked the attack or whether he provoked the use of unlawful physical force by the alleged victim.”

The security video of the incident, obtained from Waffle House, was played for the court. “The video footage of the incident contained a three-second delay between frames so the exact amount of time which elapsed between the time the initial altercation occurred and the time Mr. Forte exited the building and entered the parking lot and the incident that made the basis of the charge in this case occurred is not exact, suffice it to say it was several minutes.”

In the ruling, Reagan said that the testimony of the witnesses and the video surveillance tape of the incident “persuades the court that (Ward) was justified in standing his ground in defense of himself.”

Wards “previous medical condition regarding a traumatic brain injury suffered in combat in Iraq could have reasonably have caused him to fear for his life at the time he was being struck in the head by Forte,” Reagan said in the ruling. “The court finds that the testimony, stipulations of the parties and the video evidence shows by a preponderance of the evidence that (Ward) acted in accordance with the law of the State of Alabama in defending himself in this case.

“This order should not be viewed as a signal that the use of deadly force is taken lightly by this court,” Reagan said in his ruling. “But when presented with these facts, this court is under a legal duty to grant the requested relieve sought herein. This case is hereby dismissed.”

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