Benbow Man Charged With Attempted Homicide After Shooting Yesterday
This is a press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office. The information has not been proven in a court of law and any individuals described should be presumed innocent until proven guilty:
On March 20, 2019, at about 3:50 p.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to a residence on the 300 block of Twin Trees Road near Benbow for the report of a shooting that had just occurred.
Sheriff’s deputies quickly arrived on scene and located a 31-year-old male victim with a gunshot wound to the shoulder. The victim was transported to a local hospital in critical condition.
The suspect, 65-year-old Thomas Neil Harris, was located on a nearby property and taken into custody without incident. Upon further investigation, deputies learned that the shooting was the result of an ongoing civil dispute between the two men.
Harris was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of attempted homicide. His bail is set at $500,000.
This incident is still under investigation.
Anyone with information regarding this case is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.
UPDATE Friday: Benbow Man Released After Sheriff’s Office Determines He Acted in Self Defense in Shooting
Earlier Chapter: Shooting on Twin Trees Road Near Benbow; One in Custody
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Stresses are building in our community. Let’s find creative and peaceful ways to resolve issues.
As one idea….. Let’s get the local mediator group up and functioning again!
He did. What i heard was he called the cops days ago to get the 31 yr old tresspasser to leave and they did nothing… Guess he wouldnt leave.. Andnifnyouve ever seen this guy walk around he uses a cruch with a horrible hip injury. The 65 yr old that is.
I hear the same thing. Youmg guy was working for him, then tried to run him off his own property. Also heard the cops wouldn’t help because the old man had invited him there.
So often that the response you get from the Sheriff’s office when you have a problem -“it’s a civil matter.” The police won’t even make a report of the call if you don’t force them to do it.
This guy is a crazy asshole , don’t let his limp or age fool you , I rented from him a house he lied about owning , he broke in and pissed in my bed and got violent on several occasions, it was only a matter of time before he hurt or killed someone…
It would appear he used reasonable force at that point.
.
Violence is never a good way to solve disputes! I wonder why this young guy insisted on hanging out where he was not wanted?
Are there some Garberville Businesses that want to start to organize on this??
What’s the name of the local mediator group or contact information??
I think it’s way overdue to start getting people off the streets of town and Garberville so that people who have property and invest in business interests in the town can get things back on track.
People are now cooking heroin and shooting it up right on the Garberville sidewalk. There is a camp of over 100 people living off Sproul Creek dealing drugs all day and hanging their laundry off the freeway. The hotels are allowing people to live in the rooms permanently and deal meth all day long! They want to dump violent sex offenders just outside of town.
Enough already — It’s one main street – let’s clear up and get town moving again.
Vagrants do not have the right to destroy ENTIRE towns and LIVELIHOODS.
This isn’t compassion we are showing. It’s enabling and ruination of the community.
Are there some Garberville Businesses that want to start to organize on this??
Time to clean house. We don’t have the infrastructure to handle mass vagrancy and hard drug dealing. Those are the facts.
These people need help or jail and it’s not appropriate in a small community with serious challenges.
Yes. Now you obviously have organizational skills. Can you find someone to get the tax code back i nshape so that their wealth is taxed instead of our work?
And then we can use that money to house this lost generation, and also get the next gen of kids a decent education so they have a chance in life.
Please stop blaming the victims. No one wants to live on the side of the freeway. When people are there, they are broken. And they need help. This isnt a law and order problem its a social issue.
The solutions are in the tax code.
Appreciate your comment but your wrong. There’s a lot of help available in the US and CA. Homeless who need and want help, actively seek it to rebuild their lives. People with mental health problems need to be sent back to their families and handled by the state.
What we have is lazy vagrants and drug addicts who are choosing this lifestyle and turning everywhere they go to crap, imposing the mess on their tax paying citizen.
Humboldt is a beautiful place to live and travel — Vagrants are a scourge on productive people and an are impinging on our freedoms to live safely and prosperously in every city in CA.
The government should set up large trailer and mobile home communities for these people to go live, off our sidewalks and away from the cities and towns, provide them food and counsel so they can rejoin society at some point or they can live in the trailer camp in perpetuity if that’s all they can handle.
The money is there. There is no action. And businesses and property owners who don’t move vagrants along are selfish and shameful for the community as a whole.
It’s a social problem yes, but the rest of society can’t sink because a select number of people, especially able bodied white males 18-45, with dogs, want to squat, piss and shit wherever. If you are a local who is in to that, take them to YOUR house and take FULL responsibility for them!
Im willing to bet youre a person who wohld claim back to the land and probably made a buncha money growinf herb to start your business but dont like the dark side… Well the dark side and light side will alwaya coexist. Yoi wanted to be an outlaw and make goos but fail.to see that others will lose everything while some gain it all
..
How can you say altering taxes isn’t a solution then say government should pay for your trailer park solution? Where do you think government money comes from? Taxes!
What do you mean by fix the tax code? You do realize the top 50% of income earners pay 97 + percent of income tax. Over 44% pay no income taxes at all. I seriously doubt the people living on the side of the freeway pay more than their fair share, if any income taxes at all. I would imagine how ever, a large percentage of them get monthly paychecks. Paid for by the people who actually pay taxes, to do nothing more than sit around and shoot heroin and drink all day long….
It is way past time that we passed new laws to insist on mandatory drug test for anybody receiving social benefits…
https://taxfoundation.org/summary-federal-income-tax-data-2017/
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/tcja-increasing-share-households-paying-no-federal-income-tax
https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-rich-1950-not-high/
I totally agree, drug testing for all those that receive gov. assistance…
Alright. Lets start with corporate farmers.
You mean the farmers that grow the food you eat, or provide grain for the livestock that you eat? I think there’s a big difference between a farmer receiving government subsidies and an alcoholic or drug addict….
Yes. One of the big differences is that an addict usually only ruins their own life. While a “corporate farmer” (one who receives $ub$idie$ from our government) picks the pocket of all our citizens!
All government assistance is government assistance.
Drug testing benefit recipients is not only a waste of tax money, it also is unreasonable search and seizure (4th amendment). This poorly thought out idea just lines the pockets of giant drug testing corporations that care nothing about the Constitution or American citizens. Then again our constitutional rights have been forgotten or dismissed time after time, arrest after arrest by a government that prints “In God We Trust” on the currency and jails and fines people for growing and using plants God put here. So much hypocrisy and so few brains and very little logic by the powers that be sure make this an interesting time to be alive.
https://www.clasp.org/blog/few-tanf-applicants-test-positive-drug-use-testing-costly-and-ineffective
“Drug Testing is Ineffective: Results from drug testing in Oklahoma, Utah, and Florida show the ineffective nature of these laws. Of the 1,300 applicants screened in Oklahoma between November 2012 and February 2013, 340 were identified as possible users and required to submit to drug testing. Only 16 individuals, or 1.2 percent of TANF applicants, failed the test. In Utah, a 2012 drug testing law yielded an even lower rate; of the 4,425 individuals who were screened, 394 applicants had to submit to a drug test, with just nine failing the test. In total, only 0.2 percent of TANF applicants failed the drug tests. Similarly, when Florida instated a universal drug testing policy on TANF applicants, only 2.6 percent failed the drug test.”
After you finish in Garberville you could clean up the rest of California.
Garberville needs to do Garberville. The town is being exploited by vagrancy. I keep people off my property. No squatting. Others in town need to wake up, clean up and get back to business.
The local cops and health and human services need to do their job instead of sitting idle and collecting their tax funded checks.
The cops in this town will not make major drug busts unless it’s marijuana and the health dept. just wants to harass legit businesses while disease harboring cesspools are piling up everywhere.
I heard your heart was found. You just have to go pick it up.
I live in town, people walking the streets all night high or looking for drugs. Breaking into houses stealing anything they can. Some mental problems, yes. MOST of them are junkies. Making our town smell, look like total shit, oh and they do that anywhere they want. In front of the store in front or your house. They don’t care. My heart is getting pretty tired of the junkies here in town. Tourist will not sit in our town square and have lunch. Getting hit up for money all the time. Getting yelled at when you don’t give them money. Sorry NOT sorry.
Tourists do sit in the Town Square and have lunch because there are houseless people in every city not only in Garberville.
Town needs help.
I don’t agree completely. But something needs to change.
It was sad to speak with a tourist the other day and be asked how such a beautiful place has mentally ill and other scary looking people on the streets.
We need the county to step up. We need a vets center again. And we need other services!
Something has got to change.
I could not agree more
The meditation group was focused on trying to help with disputes between 2 people. Don’t think that working to resolve social issues would be in the scope of their mission.
You want to find out whether the mediators are still operating, or if they can help? Call Doug Fir or Rio (c/o Chautauqua store).
Can’t we all just get along
Oh mark u are funny
Have a day where people with grievances against eachother can meet somewhere with boxing gloves on and hash it out.
They could have taken that option at any point but a 65 year old man is not like to chose that against a 31 year old man. The gun eliminates that imbalance. Nor does it resolve whatever “civil” issue caused the disagreement in the first place.
Well, that sure was an ez nab HCSO . Now how about the person who shot STEPHANIE GAWBOY? When do the (collective) scum that erased CHRIS GIAUQUE from the face of the Earth get put in custody and held in 500k bail ?
It is not clear on whose property the shooting occurred on, the 31 yr old’s or the 65yr old’s?
The 65-year-old’s
Why you remove my nice words, mean lady?
It take me many hours to transcribe.
You not like art?
Only prose?
This very limiting to freedoms.
The 31 year old has no property on twin trees. He was squatting on the alleged suspects property.
I was confused too, thanks for asking the question!
Who knew Gandalf was packing heat.
YOU CANNOT PASS!
Seriously he has a self defense case and a wrongful arrest case against the cops . He called on the guy once and he was on his property a second time . That’s cause to believe your life is in danger and there is no help from law enforcement. He did what he had to and didn’t kill him . Self defense .
This will happen over and over till the cops start doing the job they were hired to and the laws stop protecting the guilty
Amen. This is redic.
This is why we have juries. If the situation is as you say then I for one would never convict. And it only takes one jury member to hang up the conviction. I hope Maggie Fleming understands that many in this county would not convict an elder w/serious mobility issues for protecting themselves when they have no other option. Many of us are very tired of the derelicts inflicting themselves upon the rest of us. No- I don’t know the real story here but I am putting out this general perspective…If anybody should be on the hot seat it should be the HCSO for not responding to the trespassing call for help!
Well said
Agreed. Well Said.
I only hope you’re correct, the enforcement of the law always went this direction but lately.. who knows? The gun grabbers want your taxes on time, BUT your property won’t get equal protection under the law?
If he was on his own property and he was a squatter he deserved what he got I feel bad for the old timer having to put up with that let alone spend time in jail
So do we start a gofundme for the property owner?
YES or a court petition to lower / remove bond until he’s let free of charges. I don’t know why this case seems an immediate arrest of shooter but in other cases like when Eugene Minakle was killed, they only questioned and then released the girlfriend, because it was self defence. If the 31 year old had been moving quickly toward the accused, then he would have every right to believe he was in iminant danger and would need to protect himself. He did not kill the guy, only stop him and this is legal!!!
I’ll agree with you on that.
I can’t start it, and I’ll await to see if he’s released upon further investigation, but if he’s charged I’ll donate.
Nevermind,
He is not going to get my $.
https://kymkemp.com/2019/03/20/shooting-on-twin-trees-road-near-benbow-one-in-custody/#comment-796619
We make the bed we sleep in. Thanks THC for a little more insight.
I hope so.
The ‘victim’ must have disputed with bodily threat or they’d still be ‘disputing’, imo.
We met Tom Harris several years ago in Pismo Beach, while he was transporting antique cars to buyers in Southern California. We were drawn to his kind friendly personality and invited him to lunch with us. We were interested in the area where he lived, as we had spent time at the Benbow
Hotel. He began to explain how difficult life was for him now. He told us someone had come onto his property, told him they were taking his property and all he owned. His protest netted shovel blows to his head and body which caused unconsciousness and injuries he still must live with, ie
his cane.
Anyone considering a Go Fund Me page to pay Tom’s bail, so he can get back to protecting his property? and an attorney to defend him?
Wow. Horrible situation.
Getting a beating with a shovel would give most anybody an attitude. It would sure as hell give me an attitude!
A criminal lawyer once told me that you`re much better off to kill someone than to just injure them. As he stated “a murder is only an assault with one less witness”. I don`t think this was said entirely in jest.
I once overheard a sheriff`s deputy advising an armed citizen that it was important to say “he attacked me and I feared for my life” if he were to shoot the miscreant. This most certainly was not said in jest.
I believe this was after he Knowingly bought a stolen hiyabusa and never paid on it. He owes lots of people lots of money.
Yes, he was almost beaten to death over a similar situation a couple years ago (which is why he walks with a cane) its easy to understand why he would be more aggressive this time.
Here is some information about Tom. He has been known to hire folks who need a hand. He will help them out, then change everything and start charging them for the time they have been there and not pay anything. He tried to force me to pump water from the eel, and would get angry the couple times I paid to get his tanks filled. I worked 18 months for this gentleman with only getting a couple bucks,never more than enough to cover my phone bill, every couple weeks. I finally had enough and gave him 2 weeks to replace me. I then packed everything, including any trash and was ready to leave when he came back 2 days later with a rifle.
I also know three other people he performed a similar action to. He was jumped outside the bar with a bottle slamming over his head due to him owing money. He only attributed this to the fact he was drunk and thus, he quit drinking. I hope someone is able to care for his dog Ganji and the brown lab he stole from his neighbor while he had the warehouse across from the sheriff substation. He has some good traits, unfortunately he uses them to attract folks he can take advantage of. To this day, I have received no money, but only threats from him for making his poor business ethics public.
I think if you talk so much on a public forum about personal events with the alleged you should man up and give out your name as well
..
. I worked for Tom in 2012. I was the first person he met when he first came here, and helped him tremendously.. I no longer live in Southern Humboldt, as I moved south to move forward with my dreams of owning a livestock farm and clean up properties. Not playing with weed. I was working for him when he tried to purchase a gun from Browns and was denied because his past was still after him
Tom has been around a lot longer than 2012.
He is a felon. Who’s gun did he have?
[edit] hes not a felon.
Not a squatter, he was invited there and Mr. Harris was told by LE of the eviction process .
Tom invited a 31 yr old transient (come to find out is seriously disturbed and ex military who brags about how many people he’s killed) to help him in trade for a place to live and $20/hr. The worker decided after less than a week of being there he was no longer going to work and was saying he refuses to leave, so Tom called the cops. They did nothing about it and made Tom start a minimal 6 month eviction. The next day he started the process. The property the squatter was on is a completely different property than Toms residence. The worker got shot at toms residence meaning he came down there as a threat. Tom will beat these bullshit charges. Beware who you let stay at your place. Even for a night. California’s fucked up laws caused this. Could have been completely avoided.
I was paid $10 an hour. Then he changed it to an additional 35 hours unpaid per week on top of the tasks he assigned.
Not saying this person was in the right. I called my losses and cut ties with him. I didn’t leave for another 5 years. Although, you can still catch me in the area. I just disagree with anyone calling this man kind. He takes advantage of people every chance he gets. Luckily it just have me motivation to leave the put industry.. For that I thank the jerk off
Just releast from the jail after the HCSO’s investigators concluded it was self defense.
SHERIFF NOW CALLS IT SELF DEFENSE & THE CHARGES ARE DROPPED
I just found this site after watching Murder Mountain on netflix. Couple of questions:
1) What the hell type of system do you people have out there? Don’t you have a Grand Jury process? Self defense or not, it would still go through a Grand Jury where I am from.
2) What the hell is up with your Sheriff’s Dept? Crazy. Just seems like they aren’t interested doing anything in your area? After watching the Murder Mountain show, I was appalled at the way they handled that. Insane! Did your former Sheriff have family in the business, dirty, what??