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War veteran threatens couple with shotgun

By Staff | Sep 6, 2013

HUGHESVILLE – A 25-year-old Iraq War veteran has been jailed on charges of allegedly threatening a man and a woman with a shotgun early Sunday morning, August 25, because he allegedly was upset that he had to move out of their Lime Bluff Road home.

When Christopher Foust and Corrina Johnson arrived back at their Muncy Creek Township home at 2409 Lime Bluff Road about 2 a.m. Sunday, they saw Breven Stuart Smith on their front porch holding a shotgun, state Trooper Justin Bieber said.

“The first one of you that comes up (on the porch), I’m going to shoot you,” Smith told the couple. He then pointed the shotgun at the two and “racked the slide,” Bieber said investigators were told.

Before Foust and Johnson left the house Saturday night to go to the movies and visit some friends, they told Smith that he was “going to move out of the house because they just weren’t getting along, particularly Smith and Johnson,” Bieber said in an affidavit.

The trooper did not say how long Smith had been staying at the house, but clearly he was no longer welcome there. Court records listed Smith’s address as Mingle Road in Anthony Township, Montour County.

After Foust and Johnson left for the movies but before they returned home, Smith sent a text message to Foust telling him “not to bring Johnson back to the house or he would kill her,” Bieber said.

It was unknown if Foust shared the text message with Johnson.

After Smith allegedly pointed the shotgun at them, Foust and Johnson drove to a neighbor’s house to call police.

When troopers arrived at the home, Smith already had fled. However, there was evidence that while Johnson and Foust were out of the house, Smith allegedly fired a shotgun round at the refrigerator in the kitchen, as well as rounds at Foust’s farm truck, Bieber said.

The couple’s flatscreen television set had been thrown into the yard and most of the refrigerator’s contents had been dumped onto the kitchen floor, Bieber said. A rifle also had been stolen from Foust’s gun cabinet

Smith remained at large until sometime Monday, August 26, when he was arrested and charged with aggravated and simple assault, terroristic threats, recklessly endangering, criminal mischief and harassment.

Following his arraignment before District Judge James H. Sortman, he was committed to the Lycoming County Prison in lieu of $100,000 bail.