Javon Prather was waiting on his next-door neighbor’s stoop, Ring video shows, when the front door swung open and a gunshot was fired without warning that appeared to strike the 24-year-old in his stomach.
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Prather turned and stumbled, then leaped down Michael Hetle’s front staircase as Hetle emerged from the home with a black handgun, the video shows. Hetle continued firing blast after blast.
What began as a neighborhood feud between Prather and Hetle had built over years to this awful climax in March 2020.
Prather collapsed on Hetle’s driveway before Hetle, still on his stairs, fired a seventh shot into his prone body. Hetle swiveled and pointed the gun in the direction of Prather’s wife.
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“You want it too?” he shouted.
The chilling scene that played out on an afternoon as a couple of neighbors watched was shown to a Fairfax County jury Wednesday at the murder trial of Hetle, a NASA executive and former police officer who shot and killed two others in the line of duty years earlier.
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Fairfax County prosecutor Joe Martin contended in his opening statement that Hetle was frustrated the homeowner’s association in the Daventry community and police weren’t taking his complaints about loud music, drinking and other issues with Prather and his wife more seriously, so he took matters into his own hands.
“You are going to learn how the anger and resentment built for Javon before that day,” Martin told the jury.
Janelle Prather, Javon’s wife, previously said in an interview she believed the couple had been targeted in part because they were both mixed-race. Hetle’s son testified Wednesday that his father, who is White, often referred to Javon Prather by a racial epithet for Black people.
An ex-officer fought with his next-door neighbor over trash and dog poop. It ended in an alleged ‘execution.’
George L. Freeman IV, an attorney for Hetle, offered a starkly different version of events in his opening statement. He painted Javon Prather as the aggressor during the March？3, 2020, slaying. Freeman said Prather had for years threatened, stalked and harassed Hetle, 52.
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Hetle had warned Javon Prather to stay away from him and his home, and Hetle believed Prather made a motion as if he had a weapon shortly before Hetle began to shoot, Freeman said. Prosecutors have said Prather was not armed.
“Mr. Hetle did not commit a murder,” Freeman said. “He was defending himself and his family.”
The day of the killing began ominously.
Martin told jurors Hetle sent an email to the homeowner’s association warning that the feud between him and Prather could “result in a tragedy.” Martin called it a threat, but Freeman said Hetle was simply expressing the need to get the spiraling dispute under control.
Hetle’s issues with his neighbors began years earlier. Freeman told the jury the Prathers regularly were drunk and in domestic disputes. He said that Janelle Prather threw her husband’s clothes on Hetle’s property and that the couple blared music from their car when it was parked in front of their house.
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The friction led to more-serious clashes. Freeman said Javon Prather had made numerous threats of violence against Hetle, and Janelle Prather had been charged with destruction of property for hurling items at Hetle’s car in 2019. Hetle got a restraining order against her.
The same year the Daventry homeowner’s association sued Janelle Prather over ongoing issues at the couple’s home. The lawsuit was later resolved.
The afternoon of the killing, hours after Hetle had sent the email, he became concerned when Javon and Janelle Prather pulled up in front of their home and were drinking inside their car, Freeman said. Hetle reported the activity to a police non-emergency number.
The couple drove away before police arrived and then later returned, Freeman said. Hetle told his neighbors he had called police, which Freeman said angered Javon Prather. Prather went inside his home and began pounding on the wall separating his home and Hetle’s, Freeman said.
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The Ring video shows Javon Prather leave his home and make his way next door, before it stops and then picks up when the front door opens and Hetle begins firing. Freeman said that during the gap in the video, Prather was pounding on the door so violently it popped ajar.
Freeman said Hetle had seen Prather holding something as he approached the door and thought he saw Prather reaching for it again when he decided to open fire, fearing it was a weapon.
Martin said in his opening statement that one of the shots that Hetle fired hit Prather in the back as he stumbled down Hetle’s stairs and severed his spinal cord. As Martin described the final shot hitting Prather under the chin, a relative of Prather’s, who was in the courtroom, gasped.
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The Ring video continued to capture the aftermath of the shooting. Janelle Prather attempted to run to help her husband as he lay on Hetle’s driveway, before he told her to get back.
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She eventually made it to her husband and began pulling him toward their house by his arms.
“Leave him!” Hetle shouted.
“I’m not leaving my husband!” Janelle Prather shouted back.
The trial, before Fairfax County Circuit Judge Randy I. Bellows, is continuing.
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