Fatal encounter between 2 teens before Knox jury
In a case that devastated the lives of two West Knox County families, there is only one question for jurors this week: Did Jack Andrew Bush have the right to shoot his drunken but unarmed former classmate?
Bush, 21, is standing trial this week in Knox County Criminal Court on a charge of voluntary manslaughter in the December 2014 shooting death of Evan Hall, 19, Bush’s former football teammate and classmate at Hardin Valley Academy, on Christin Lee Circle, where both grew up and both still lived with their parents.
Bush, like Hall, was 19 years old at the time. There had been no apparent bad blood between the two. Their families were neighbors. Now, those same families sit divided in Judge Bob McGee’s courtroom as Assistant District Attorney General Nathaniel Ogle seeks a conviction as justice for the Hall family while defense attorney James A.H. Bell urges acquittal as justice for the Bush family.
Much of the facts aren’t in
“He didn’t call 911. He went outside in order to confront an unarmed man with a handgun. It was Jack Bush who took it upon himself to play cowboy that night.”
dispute. Hall got drunk at Bailey’s Sports Bar and Grille in West Knox County during a Christmas party with his lube service co-workers. While Bush was at home in bed, Hall was driving drunk, crashing into the rear of a car on Cedar Bluff Road without stopping and then careening through his subdivision, knocked over signs and mailboxes, running into yards and even hitting a tree before his truck came to rest at a tree line that separated the Bush property from an adjacent one.
“I’m not going to try to sugarcoat anything that happened that night,” Ogle told jurors Monday in opening statements. “But keep in mind [Bush] did’t know a single thing about any of that.”
According to Ogle, Bush’s sister ran outside, saw Hall in the crashed truck and ran back inside. Bush came out a short time later armed with a 9 mm handgun.
“He didn’t call 911,” Ogle said. “He went outside in order to confront an unarmed man with a handgun. It was Jack Bush who took it upon himself to play cowboy that night.”
Ogle said Bush shot Hall three times at close range, defined forensically as between 18 and 24 inches away. Hall was shot in the face, in the chest and shoulder. Two of the wounds would have been fatal on their own.
Bell contends Hall, a former linebacker, was in a drunken rage and charged at Bush even as Bush warned him he was armed.
“It’s not like Jack Bush was riding the range like a cowboy,” Bell said. “He was in bed asleep. Something got a hold of [Hall] that changed him, like he was a demon possessed.”
Bell is mounting a self defense claim in seeking an acquittal. The trial continues today.
— ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY GENERAL NATHANIEL OGLE