Darby man guilty on some charges for shooting at wife

Damen Looney, 44, acquitted on attempted murder, convicted on agg assault

MEDIA COURTHOUSE » A Darby man was found not guilty Tuesday of attempted homicide for firing a gun at his wife inside their home last year, but was convicted on aggravated assault and related offenses following a one-day bench trial before Common Pleas Court Judge Richard Cappelli.

Damen Looney, 44, of the first block of North Third Street, was also found guilty of simple assault, reckless endangerment, possessing an instrument of crime, terroristic threats and endangering the welfare of a child.

The judge heard from the victim, Joy Looney, who said she was working from home Feb. 25, 2022, and that her daughter was also home sick from school that day. Around lunchtime, Joy said she recorded a workout video and posted it to her social media accounts, but soon got a call from her husband asking her to take it down.

The victim refused and her husband arrived home about 15 minutes later while she was doing meal prep in the kitchen, she said. He again asked her to remove the video and when she refused again, she said he became increasingly aggressive and raised his hand as though to strike her.

The victim called the police seeking someone to come help talk him down or get him out of the house, she testified. The defendant meanwhile went upstairs.

After she had hung up with the police, Joy Looney said she saw her husband come back down with a handgun and begin pacing in the living room while muttering to himself.

Damen Looney was saying “Everybody wants me to be a bad guy. I’ll show them a bad guy” and, “Everybody thinks everything’s funny till it’s not funny,” according to his wife.

She said she watched him out of the side of her left eye while standing at the stove, but did not engage with him.

Moments of fear

The victim said her husband paced for about a minute or two until he eventually raised his gun arm and began walking toward the kitchen, screaming, “This is how you want it to end!”

Joy Looney said her husband fired at her four times as she tried to crouch over the stove.

“I just kind of waited for a bullet to hit me, honestly,” she told Assistant District Attorney Melanie Reynolds. “(I was) just thinking, ‘This is probably where I die, in the kitchen.’ ”

As Damen Looney began to make his way to the kitchen threshold, the victim said she heard her daughter’s bedroom door open upstairs. The defendant moved to the foot of the stairs as the daughter came down and asked what the noise was.

Damen Looney then put the gun to his head and told the teenager, “It’s over,” according to the victim.

He then threw the gun on the sofa and went into the basement, according to Joy Looney.

The victim and daughter fled and began driving away as Damen Looney was exiting the rear of the house and getting in his own car, Joy Looney testified.

She spotted a squad car parked nearby and waived down the officer, explaining the situation. Joy Looney said she had not even noticed her daughter had grabbed the firearm, which she gave to the officer.

Daughter testifies

The 14-year-old daughter backed up much of this account, saying she heard her father come home and begin arguing with her mother. She then heard her father go into her parents’ bedroom and rummage in a closet before heading back downstairs. As she was descending the steps herself, the daughter said she heard four loud bangs.

Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, she said she saw Damen Looney moving toward the kitchen with the gun and her mother ducked behind a bar. The defendant then turned and came back toward the daughter, she said, put the gun against his head and fell on the floor yelling before tossing the gun on the sofa and going to the basement.

On cross-examination by defense attorney Michael Dugan, the daughter said a statement she had given police the day of the shooting incorrectly indicated her father was already walking away from the kitchen when she got downstairs.

She said she was still processing the situation when she wrote that account, but reiterated that she saw him walking toward her mother in the kitchen with the gun.

Police testify

Cappelli also heard from Darby Officer David Cuddhy of the Anti-Crime Unit, who said he photographed the interior of the home, and recovered five spent shell casings and two projectiles.

Cuddhy said three casings were found on the dining room floor, one was on the living room couch and one was on top of the dining room table. Delaware County Criminal Investigation Division Detective Louis Grandizio said four of those shell casings were matched to the pistol recovered from the daughter.

Cuddhy said one bullet was recovered from the ceiling of the kitchen and another was removed from the exterior behind the home. Two bullets went through a wall and refrigerator and one broke a window in the kitchen, Cuddhy said.

Cuddhy told Dugan that all four of the strikes were to the right of the stove area where the victim said she was crouched, with the one in the ceiling only slightly leftward of the wall two of the bullets had passed through.

Damen Looney did not testify and Dugan stipulated that four witnesses would speak to his reputation as a law abiding citizen if called.

The closings

Dugan argued in closing that his client absolutely meant to terrorize his wife and was reckless, but said the aggravated assault and attempt murder charges had not been proven.

He claimed the bullet strikes into the wall to Joy Looney’s right indicate her husband was not aiming at her and the victim never testified that he had, despite how close they were and her never losing sight of him.

Dugan noted that upon first contacting an officer, Joy Looney reported her husband was discharging a firearm in the house, but did not say anything like, “My husband shot at me” or “My husband tried to kill me,” and pointed to the discrepancy about where the daughter said the defendant was walking in her

original statement.

Reynolds argued that Joy Looney’s perception was irrelevant to the fact that Damen Looney was upset, retrieved a loaded gun from his closet, and fired at his wife while advancing on her. But for the daughter’s interference, she said, he very well may have killed her.

But Damen Looney does not get credit for being a poor shot, Reynolds said, noting Grandizio had testified that moving while firing a gun could throw off a shooter’s aim. She added that this was not a scenario where two people are in a wide-open field, but a close space inside a house and that Damen Looney fired four shots in his wife’s direction.

The judge indicated he would set a sentencing date Thursday, and schedule a second case in which Looney is alleged to have fled from police and shot himself after violating bail and a protection-from-abuse order in this case by contacting his wife and sending her a picture of himself with a gun.

Damen Looney remains in custody at the county jail in Concord, where he has been held since his second arrest April 22.