The Price of Being Downtrodden

Somerset woman arraigned
 in alleged shooting hoax
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By Grant Welker
Herald News Staff Reporter
Posted Mar 05, 2010 @ 07:06 PM
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SOMERSET — The Somerset woman who police say made up an elaborate lie about a shooting at her home in December was finally arraigned Friday in District Court.
Jennifer Smith, 33, initially told police that an unknown man broke into her house at 82 Midland Road and shot her with her own gun. Smith was taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound on her arm, and as many as 50 police officers from a dozen law enforcement agencies combed the area around her house to look for the gunman.


The next day, though, police said they discovered the whole story was made up.
On Friday, Smith was formally charged with obstructing a criminal investigation, a felony, and making a false crime report, a misdemeanor. Smith, whose husband is a Fall River police officer, was released on personal recognizance on the condition that she keep no firearms in her home. She has a pretrial hearing scheduled for May 3.

Somerset Police Chief Joseph Ferreira said at a press conference on Dec. 5, the day after the shooting, that Smith lied about the incident. “The story was fabricated,” he said. “One shot was fired inadvertently, then she fired two more times to cover up what happened. ... She said she was spooked and fired one shot.”
One of those shots ricocheted off something and struck her in the arm. She was released from the hospital after one day.

Smith originally told police that an intruder broke through a window, wrestled her gun from her, told her he was going to kill her, then shot her before fleeing. She went so far as to describe the intruder’s physical characteristics to police and detailed a struggle she said took place in her kitchen.
Investigators soon found inconsistencies in Smith’s stories and said her account had been a hoax.
“Jennifer stated that she was afraid her husband would think she was crazy,” a Somerset detective wrote in a police report, “so she attempted to cover up the accidental discharge by firing two more rounds into the kitchen to make it appear that there was an intruder in the house.”
E-mail Grant Welker at gwelker@heraldnews.com.

This is a sad story. I do not know what went on in that family. I have no idea what kind of troubles haunt this woman. I understand the resources spent tracking down what amounted to "ghosts" in this instance were extremely wasteful and could have been tragic. But I do know this woman needs help or support of some kind.

Given she is the spouse of a police officer I'm sure the popular perception of how this case went this way or that has been a subject of conjecture, even glee, by many in our community over a considerable period of time. I am sure it's not the way the overwhelming majority of good and right thinking people in the region consider such incidents.

As I read the comments section of the Herald News about this story, I find the same names prattling on the same inane, ignorant, and most often, hateful comments about this and, usually, every other story published by the HN. I have come to the conclusion that these people need mental health services as much as this poor woman in the story probably does.

This cadre of hateful individuals want only to stomp the life out of those who think differently, live differently or show their humanity in any real, and especially, frail ways. It makes me review my own thoughts and behaviors. "Good Lord please do not let me stay in such darkness of mind and spirit" I find myself saying when I read such comments.

I know I increasingly examine stories and issues that have little to do directly with Fall River because I find such hurtful sentiment far too common among a small but growing population of intolerant citizens of this City. I'm sure it has much to do with poor economic and living conditions for many in Fall River, especially those with fixed incomes and those who see their City mutate into one they no longer recognize. Change is difficult for peoples and communities as well as governing bodies and administrations. The fear they experience is real, and is never just an indication of some mental process gone wrong. In most cases, that is.

I think that's the main problem here.There becomes little difference between the troubled woman who accidently shoots herself out of some overriding sense of fear and mental confusion or illness and those who, also driven by a sense of fear just as chronic, and at times just as acute, cannot let go of their fear driven anger over a long period of time. It is just as poisonous to the human spirit as any other form of mental illness. In fact, it is mental illness, because it destroys the ability to appeal, as Abraham Lincoln put it so eloquently, "to the better angels of our nature" when condisering other's plights, or our own.

For our own sakes, and those of our fellow human being in this City, we need to work
hard and work together to improve the lot of each person, what ever that means we must do, however that can be done. This cloud of despair is having an impact in ways we cannot truly calculate. It absolutely is knawing away at the very fabric of this community and increases the fear, hatred and intolerance within this City's population who feel increasingly vulnerable.