stand-your-ground law<\/a> in seeking immunity from prosecution. Such laws say people have no duty to retreat before using deadly force when they believe they are defending themselves against a violent crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\nProsecutors dispute Radford’s story. Several witnesses testified Friday that Radford had harassed Lay for months before the shooting, repeatedly using homophobic slurs. Prosecutors presented recorded jail phone calls where Radford used a homophobic slur to describe Lay after his arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul Gumpert, a friend of Lay, testified that it wasn’t in Lay’s character to be the aggressor, describing Lay as \u201cvery mild-mannered and very dismissive of any pressure against him.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lay shared a video claiming Radford had threatened him at the dog park the day before the shooting. In the video, Lay claimed he had an encounter with Radford at the park and that Radford told him, \u201cYou\u2019re going to die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Radford acknowledged using slurs against Lay. But he told Assistant State Attorney Justin Diaz under questioning that he treated Lay differently because \u201cof the way he treated me\u201d and not because of his sexual orientation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defense attorneys pointed to a a text message Lay sent after the video as proof he planned to attack Radford. Lay wrote in part that he would \u201ctry to tackle\u201d Radford if he blocked his path again. In addition, he wrote, \u201cthis weekend should be drama.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In response to questions from defense attorney Matthew Futch, the 66-year-old Radford said the 52-year-old Lay had \u201ccompletely\u201d overpowered him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHad you not drawn your firearm to defend yourself, do you believe you would have suffered great bodily harm or death?\u201d Futch asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Radford, crying, answered yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But prosecutors said the trajectory of the bullet through Lay’s body, as traced by an autopsy, makes it unlikely that Lay was on top of Radford when Lay was shot, as Radford claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hillsborough County Chief Medical Examiner Kelly Devers testified it would be \u201chard\u201d for a bullet to take the path it did if Lay had been laying or kneeling on Radford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Diaz argued there are inconsistencies in Radford\u2019s account. \u201cIt\u2019s a hate crime,\u201d Diaz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ward said she will rule on the stand-your-ground motion next week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
abcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. — A Florida man accused of a hate crime for killing a gay man is asking a judge to dismiss the charges, saying he acted in self-defense. Gerald Radford testified on Friday that he feared for his own life when he shot John \u201cWalt\u201d Lay at a Tampa dog park on Feb. 2. Local […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":35626,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[2025,1483,1350],"class_list":["post-35625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-accused","tag-he","tag-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35627,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35625\/revisions\/35627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}