Elderly ‘Right-to-Life’ volunteer shot while door-to-door canvassing, suspect says it was an accident

Right-to-Life volunteer, 84-year-old Joan Jacobson was shot while she was door-to-door canvassing in Odessa, Michigan.

Jacobsen had been going door-to-door on September 20th to ask people to vote no on Proposal 3, which is a bill that would guarantee abortion when she was shot on the shoulder.

“I was stunned, absolutely,” Jacobson said during a Thursday, Sept. 29 phone interview with MLive. “I was thinking ‘Did he really shoot me?’”

“I thought I was shot in the back. The pain was so intense in my back,” she said.

Jacobson said that both her and her attorney, David Kallman, addressed the media on Thursday following a Sept. 27 WOODTV report where that included interviews with witnesses to the shooting.

According to MLive, the suspect who allegedly shot Jacobson has denied doing so intentionally. The man said he was concerned that Jacobson was being aggressive and he thought she was going to hit his wife with a clipboard she was waving around, so he used his firearm to knock it out of her hands and accidentally pulled the trigger.

He also told WOODTV he fired a warning shot a moment earlier. The couple claimed Jacobson was obstinate, argumentative and initially ignored orders to leave the property.

Richard Harvey, 74, said he shot Jacobson accidentally while she was arguing with his wife after being told several times to leave, WOOD-TV reported.

“This lady comes up to me, knocks on my door, and says she’s from some coalition to save women and babies,” Sharon Harvey said. “She needed me to vote ‘no’ on Proposal 3. I told her I can’t do that. She would not take the fact that I was going to vote ‘yes’ on Proposal 3 as an answer. She didn’t care.”

Sharon Harvey said she told the woman to leave their property, but the woman responded, “Well, I have a right to be here,” before eventually retreating from the potch.

“It got louder and louder. My husband was in the barn and he heard it,” Sharon Harvey said.

He said the woman continued “ranting and raving” and waving a clipboard.

“I’m thinking she’s going to smack Sharon with it,” Richard Harvey said. “So without thinking, I went to club it away with the rifle and my finger was still in the trigger guard. It went off and hit her.”

However, Jacobson has said that the incident did not happen the way portrayed by the couple.

“I didn’t do anything aggressive,” she said, adding that she never acted angrily or raised her voice during the encounter, which she said went on for about five minutes.

Jacobson said she was leaving and walking down a sidewalk at the house. Jacobsen said she knew the woman was behind her, but she didn’t see any reason to be alarmed at this stage.

Jacobsen said she then looked up and saw a man standing next to the woman with a long gun.

“By the time it registered in my brain, I heard the shot, and I felt the pain,” Jacobson said. She was then driven to a local police station and was treated at a local hospital.