MIDDLEBURG — A March 22 slaying victim threatened his alleged killer a year ago, said a friend of the suspect who could face the death penalty if convicted in the homicide.
Snyder County District Attorney Michael Sholley on Monday filed a notice of his intent to seek the death penalty against Travis Graham, 26, of RR2 Richfield, if he’s convicted of first-degree murder in the slaying of Jeffrey Stock, of Richfield.
Graham’s friend, Christie Gearhart, said the suspect feared Stock and doesn’t deserve such a harsh penalty if convicted.
“Jeffrey threatened to kill Travis and his family,” Gearhart said in a telephone interview from her home in Texas.
State trooper Rob Reeves testified at a recent preliminary hearing that Graham said he feared Stock, 46, and was trying to only scare him when he fired a high-powered rifle at the older man’s stomach as he smoked a cigarette on the porch of his Seven Stars Road home in West Perry Township at about 10:30 p.m. March 22.
Reeves also testified that there were two reported physical confrontations between Graham and Stock a year before the slaying, but provided no details about those incidents. Graham pleaded not guilty to an open count of criminal homicide and two counts of aggravated assault Monday at his arraignment before President Judge Harold F. Woelfel Jr.
Gearhart said she believes there are mitigating factors that should be considered in Graham’s case.
She and her three children lived for about a month in early 2007 with Graham and his girlfriend, Jessica R. Lehman, who is Stock’s stepdaughter.
“I met Jessica and she and Travis took us in,” Gearhart said.
Gearhart said she was aware of problems between Stock and Graham and witnessed a confrontation between the pair outside the home one day in February 2007.
“He threw Travis up against the trailer,” she said. “I went to the door and heard (Stock) threatening to kill Travis, his mom and other members of his family.”
Lehman called 911 and police showed up, but Gearhart said she never asked what prompted the argument.
“I tried not to get into their affairs. I had my own family problems,” she said.
Gearhart and her children moved to Texas about a month later.
While she has no idea what led to the animosity between Stock and Graham, Gearhart believes Graham was afraid of his girlfriend’s stepfather and doesn’t believe the death penalty is warranted.
“Jeffrey threatened Travis and his whole family,” she said. “If I thought (Graham) was a violent person, I wouldn’t have put my kids in his home. He was good to me and my kids.”
Defense attorney George Matangos, of Lemoyne, did not return a phone call Tuesday.
The three aggravating factors cited by Sholley in filing the notice for the death penalty are that Graham tortured Stock by intentionally shooting him in the stomach where death would be prolonged; endangered someone else by firing a weapon at night from a distance of 180 yards when Stock’s longtime girlfriend, Brenda Soder, was seven feet away inside the house; and he had a prior conviction for corruption of minors which prohibits him from possessing firearms.
If the charges go before a jury, it will be the first death penalty case litigated by the district attorney.
In 2002, Sholley prepared to prosecute Robert J. Molinari for capital murder in the 1994 stabbing of Jose M. Abarca, of Arizona, in Shamokin Dam, but Molinari pleaded guilty to first-degree homicide before it went to trial.
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