Woman cleared of gun charge

Dementia patient had incident with husband

A woman with dementia can reunite with her husband, whom she had been accused of threatening with a gun 14 months ago, after criminal charges were dismissed Monday.

The rulings for Beverly Levine, 86, followed an agreement between the former West Boca woman’s lawyer and prosecutors on one key condition: She gave up all rights to the .38 Special revolver seized by deputies after the June 2016 incident in the home she shared with Herbert Furash, 84.

Defense attorney Leonard Feuer said Levine, who currently lives at an Alzheimer’s facility in West Delray, doesn’t need or want the gun anyway.

“I’m thrilled that Mrs. Levine can have contact with her husband again and they can enjoy their twilight years together,” Feuer said. “They just wanted to be with each other and now they can.”

Initially, Levine was charged with attempted felony murder over the shooting in a usually quiet community

called Town Villas, north of Yamato Road and east of Lyons Road. The charge later was downgraded to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Then in late March, prosecutor Jean Francis added a domestic battery misdemeanor charge.

But Levine’s attorney had moved to dismiss the charges because of his client’s deteriorating mental state and Furash’s insistence that he had not been threatened at gunpoint.

Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath canceled a hearing on the matter Monday after the prosecutor told Feuer his arguments were “well-taken.”

The judge also removed a no-contact order that had prevented the couple from communicating. They married in 2012, 14 years after the death of her first husband.

Before her arrest, Levine had no criminal history or previous domestic violence incidents.

“The state believes the community will remain safe given the facts of this case,” said Mike Edmondson, spokesman for the State Attorney’s Office. “The agreement is in the best interest of all parties involved, including the victim.”

Attempts to reach Furash on Monday were unsuccessful.

Last November, he told the lawyers that his wife had been increasingly consumed by fears of people coming for them. She paced the floors of their Stewart Circle home with her gun and repeatedly looked in the garage for intruders, said Furash, a retired educator.

“She was concerned about people coming into the house through the roof, through the doors, through the windows, trying to take me, take her, take both of us, take the house,” Furash testified in a deposition. “And that just played on her all that time. Even the Mafia was out to get us.”

Levine continued to worry, even after calling a roofing company and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office to investigate the noises she heard.

On June 19, 2016, she called 911 to report footsteps on the roof. After deputies responded and left, Levine grabbed her gun and ordered Furash to their bedroom, expecting an imminent invasion by people on the rooftop, according to court records.

Furash has said he struggled to grab the gun from Levine and two shots were fired. Furash fled the house without his shoes on, clutching his walker, and was picked up by passers-by who took him to a nearby pharmacy to get help.

Early the next morning, Levine called the Sheriff’s Office to report that she had shot her husband twice and he was missing. But he had no wounds. Deputies reported that they found bullet holes in an armoire and a wall.

A court document detailing the reason for the charge states Levine threatened violence against Furash and pointed a gun at him that caused a “wellfounded fear” of being harmed.

But in February, Furash signed a statement that Levine held the gun to his back but never pointed it at him or threatened violence. He claimed his wife only “threatened to kill the ‘people’ she imagined were coming to harm us.”

Feuer wrote his client has “an inability to distinguish between reality and grandiose theories involving her own imminent demise.”

Court documents don’t say where Levine got the weapon or for how long she had it. Furash testified that he expressed concerns about it with his wife, having told her, “I don't want any accidents to happen.”

Levine