The prosecutor in Hancock County will decide by Wednesday whether to file charges against a woman for the shooting death of her husband at their rural Greenfield home.
The Hancock County Sheriff‘s Office filed a 72-hour extension so they could continue to hold 55-year-old Elizabeth Roberts. She was held for questioning after 57-year-old Gary Roberts was shot dead on Friday inside their house in the 3900 block of South 800 East.
Captain Jeff Rasche (RASH), investigations commander for the sheriff‘s office, says the complicated nature of the case caused time to run out on the current jail hold. Rasche says Elizabeth Roberts is only a person of interest, even though it appers she admitted to shooting her husband.
Elizabeth and Gary Roberts had been married 31 years, but Rasche says the couple had begun having problems recently. Elizabeth Roberts had asked deputies to intervene earlier on Friday, and Rasche says he had obtained a warrant to detain Gary Roberts for a psychological evaluation and to remove his weapons from his home. “Really, the only thing that we had was that he possibly was going to do harm to himself, so we wanted to take those weapons from him so he wouldn‘t be able to use those,” said Rasche. “Unfortunately, circumstances drastically changed, and eventually we were called there for a person shot.”
Rasche says Gary Roberts was one of the better known gun collectors in Hancock County. “He had quite a collection of weapons. Not only did he collect weapons, he collected the right ones. His collection was probably one like no one else had ever seen,” said Rasche. Roberts had also been experiencing a problem with alcohol and drugs recently.
The prosecutor has the option of filing or declining to file charges or referring the case to a grand jury.
