JEFFERSON COUNTY, Mo. – A Jefferson County man has received few answers about his son’s fatal shooting in June.
Since then, Georg Noe constantly questioned why the courts protect the person accused of murder.
The secrecy is because the shooting suspect is a juvenile, but Noe recently hired an attorney who said he has more rights than he was told.
Attorney Grant Boyd stepped in after FOX 2 first featured Noe’s case in August.
Boyd, who works for the O’Brien Law Firm, specializes in advocating for victims in the juvenile court system.
“What our clients are feeling in their views is not justice, and it’s just further hurt,” he said.
Boyd began representing Noe after FOX 2 attended a hearing with him in August. It was a hearing, in which the media had to wait out in the hallway because of the juvenile suspect.
A juvenile court officer told Noe that he was not allowed answers about how his 16-year-old son Nick was shot and killed. The court officer handed a police report to the suspect’s family, telling Noe he was not allowed to have it.
Then things got heated in the juvenile courtroom.
“I got escorted out by the bailiff. I’m treated like I’m the person that committed the crime,” Noe said.
His son’s killer was 16 years old when he pulled the trigger. It happened inside a home in the Byrnes Mill Farms neighborhood. Deputies said several people then drove the victim to a gas station at Highways PP and 30, where they called the police and claimed someone shot at them on the highway.
Investigators got to the bottom of it and arrested a teen suspect who has been protected by the juvenile courts ever since.
Noe said the system had disregarded his family.
“They won’t give me the police report,” he said. “They won’t give me the paperwork they gave the defendant’s family.”
“I think his son would be proud of how hard he’s fighting for him,” Boyd said.
Boyd took on Noe’s case for free to fight for Noe to get into court and to get a copy of the police report.
“He has a right to the report based on the provisions of Missouri law,” Boyd said. “For people to be standing in the way of that, anywhere regardless of what happened in a specific case, is troubling.”
Boyd said he often sees victims of juvenile offenders retraumatized in the secretive court process.
“We might advise a client not to voluntarily cooperate with a juvenile officer or juvenile proceeding because of the re-traumatization that’s going on,” he said.
“Pursue justice in other ways,” Boyd said. “That may actually give them a feeling of justice.”
It may include a civil lawsuit against the perpetrator, which Boyd said he helps families take on.
Noe just got a copy of the police report. It has been 18 weeks since his son was shot and killed. FOX 2 will follow up with him once he has a chance to process the facts, he now has, about how his son died that tragic night.