A New Jersey priest has been arrested for allegedly pointing a gun at an 8-year-old boy because the kid was cheering for the Dallas Cowboys to beat the New York Giants. The priest's lawyer dismissed it as "horseplay."
The Rev. Kevin Carter, a priest at St. Margaret of Cortona Roman Catholic Church in Little Ferry and apparently a big Giants fan, asked the young Cowboys fan to see him in a room in the rectory on Sept. 13, according to Bergen County prosecutors and
WNBC-TV.
Once there, said Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli, Carter pulled out musket and pointed it at the boy and threatened to shoot him.
A parishioner who claimed to have witnessed the incident contacted the Newark Archdiocese on Sept. 25 and the diocesan officials waited three days to the prosecutor's office, noted WNBC-TV.
NJ Advance Media reported that the authorities confiscated and "Civil War" style musket, ammunition, gun powder and other items from the priest and arrested him after interviewing him about the incident.
Carter was held on $15,000 bond on charges of endangering the welfare of a child and aggravated assault by pointing a firearm.
Carter's attorney, Harold Cassidy, told
People magazine what his client did amounted to nothing more than horseplay and that he was shocked by the charges.
"There were a number of people present on the day of good-natured jesting, between me, a Giants fan as is well known, and a Cowboy fan," Carter said in a statement to People. "Unfortunately, it seems, that one person misinterpreted the good-natured exchange.”
Carter was ordained into the priesthood in 1986 in Newark, and has served at churches in Wyckoff, Hillsdale, Oakland, Ho-Ho-kus and at St. Nicholas Church in Jersey City arriving at St. Margaret's in February 2013, the prosecutor's office told NJ Advance Media.
"The young boy was apparently a fan of a particular football team, the priest was not," Molinelli told WNBC-TV. "So perhaps we have indication it started out as that. There's no such thing as joking around with a weapon when you're dealing with an 8-year-old kid."
It did not get better for the priest later on Sept. 13 as the Giants blew a fourth-quarter lead to lose to the Cowboys 27-26.
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