Police in Bogart, Georgia, arrested 45-year-old Richard Harold Gear earlier this week after he shot and killed 21-year-old Bryan Joseph Mough, a motorcyclist who had followed Gear's teenage daughters home from a Target department store in Athens. Gear claims that the shooting was in self-defense; however, authorities say that the evidence points to murder.
According to police, Gear's two daughters, ages 17 and 19, called their father from their cell phones Monday evening and told him that Mough was following them on a motorcycle. The girls allegedly said that the incident started when they made obscene gestures at him after he cut them off in the Target parking lot. The girls also claimed that Mough had run his motorcycle into the back of their Nissan Sentra.
When the girls pulled up to their family home, Gear was standing in the driveway with a loaded .40-caliber semi-automatic handgun. Mough initially continued driving down the road but then turned around to pass by the house again. When Mough drove by the second time, Gear raised his handgun and fired multiple shots. One of the bullets struck Mough in the back. Gear then called 911 and reported the shooting, allegedly claiming that he had fired the gun in self-defense when Mough attempted to run him over with the motorcycle. When paramedics arrived on the scene, they transported Mough to a local hospital, but he was pronounced dead upon arrival. Afterwards, police arrested Gear and charged him with the murder of Bryan Joseph Mough.
"I don't know how you can legally shoot someone in the back on a motorcycle and then claim that he was trying to run you down," Oconee County Sheriff Scott Berry told ABC News.
Berry is also skeptical of statements given by Gear's two daughters. None of the surveillance footage from inside the Target department store or in the parking lot indicates that Mough had any contact with the girls. In addition, Berry is unconvinced that Mough had rammed their car.
"It would be unusual for a motorcycle to ram a four-wheel vehicle," he said.
