An Ohio woman shot and killed a teenager who broke into her house wearing an Insane Clown Posse mask, and the boy’s friends were charged with murder.
Heather Tackett said she awoke Sunday about 4 a.m. to find an intruder wearing a "wicked clown" mask favored by the rap-rock duo standing over her 17-year-old son’s bed.
The 37-year-old Prairie Township woman said she screamed at the intruder and fired one shot from her boyfriend’s .38 revolver, reported The Columbus Dispatch.
The masked intruder fled through her backyard, and she learned hours later he had died – and that he had once been friends with her son.
Reb Barbee died from a gunshot wound to the upper back about 6 a.m. at OhioHealth Doctors Hospital, where two friends had the 17-year-old taken by ambulance more than an hour after the shooting.
They first wheeled Barbee on a chair to his home, but 17-year-old Adam Pickens called 911 about 5:15 a.m. to report that a friend had been shot.
He told the dispatcher the wound may have been self-inflicted but declined to say more because he didn’t want the friend to get in trouble.
Pickens and another friend, 17-year-old Brandon Hamilton, were arrested after Barbee’s death and charged with delinquency counts of murder and complicity to aggravated burglary.
Authorities said the teens were charged with murder because they did not immediately seek help for their wounded friend but instead tried to cover up the break-in by taking him home.
“If they would have got him help, we wouldn’t be talking about murder charges,” Franklin County Sheriff Zach Scott said. “It was a bad decision on top of a bad decision.”
Pickens was charged in adult court, and he remains held on $250,000 bond.
Tackett said Barbee, a vocational school student training as a welder, had eaten dinner and spent the night at her home in the past, but she said her son stopped hanging around him about a year ago because he didn’t like the things his friend was involved in.
“I am devastated,” Tackett said. “I really liked that kid and I was really good to him, and it breaks my heart he’d enter my home like that.”
Tackett said she did not call 911 to report the incident because she was unaware she had shot the intruder.
She said Barbee, who she is convinced intended to harm her son, was wearing gloves and a mask, so there would have been no evidence for deputies to gather.
“I would have called had I thought I hit him,” Tackett said.
The sheriff said prosecutors will determine whether Tackett will face charges in the case, and she wishes Barbee had spoken up when she entered the room and screamed at him.
“Had he said, 'Heather, don’t,' or, 'It’s me,' or 'Jake,' or something to one of us, the situation would be very different,” Tackett said.
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit in July filed against the FBI by the Insane Clown Posse, who objected to the bureau's labeling their fans -- who call themselves "juggalos" -- a "loosely organized hybrid gang."
Watch this video report posted online by WSYX-TV:
