Law&Crime Sidebar - Son Shot by Mom's Boyfriend in Argument Turned Deadly: ‘I Didn’t Think He’d Do It’

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

Kyle Spitze, 24, says his mother’s boyfriend, 68-year-old Jeffrey Scott West, escalated an argument when he threatened Spitze with a gun in a now-viral video. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber speaks to Kyle Spitze in an exclusive interview about what led up to the tense confrontation and West’s death.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’ve suffered an injury and need legal support click www.attorneytom.com/Sidebar for a FREE consultation or dial 855-TOM-WINS.HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You're going to blow my mom? You're going to blow my mom's brains out? Point that gun in me again. It is an absolutely shocking video of a man shooting his girlfriend's son in the ear in a domestic dispute, and we are joined by that young man himself to get to the bottom. of what happened. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

There's this cell phone video, and it is making waves online. You may have seen it. We are not going to show the whole video because it's graphic, but we're going to show snippets of things here and there. This happened down in Friendsville, Tennessee, and it shows a highly disturbing domestic incident from August 25, 2023. Now, according to authorities in the video, you observe a manned, 68-year-old Jeffrey Scott West, and he's in an argument with his partner's son, 24-year-old, Kyle W. Spitz. Now, Spitz appears to be recording the video. Now, in the video, West appears to take out a handgun, saying, quote,

I'm getting ready to blow his brains out. Spitz replies, blow my brains out, shoot me, and I guarantee you'll go to jail for life. At another point in the video, West threatens Spitz and his mother, Melanie, I'm getting ready to blow his brain out and yours. From there, Spitz appears to be in his room, or for majority of the video on his bed, and Melanie appears to be trying to intervene. Well, then Spitz exits the room.

He says to West, you're going to blow my mom's brains out? Point that gun at me again. And that is when West fires the gun. One shot, you come to find out that that bullet struck Spitz's ear. you hear silence, you see blood droplets, he runs out of the house, you hear Melanie saying, you just effing hit him, followed by, oh my God, you're going to jail. The video stops as Spitz goes outside, and then we have come to learn that 911 is called.

Officers arrive on the scene. They have a standoff with West who is in the home. They negotiate with him. It's a standoff for about two and a half hours. And sadly, Mr. West would be found in the home dead from an apparent self-inflicted gun. gunshot wound. As for Kyle Spitz, thankfully, he survived. He is okay. And guess what? We are joined right now by Kyle Spitz himself. Kyle, thank you so much for coming on here and very nice to meet you. I know this isn't an easy thing to talk about. So I appreciate you being generous with your time,

generous with talking about what happened. I actually just want to ask, how are you doing? As of right now today how are you doing um i'm thriving actually right now um life is doing me great um i haven't had anything serious come from it from the event so i mean honestly i just had stitches in my ear and uh i moved on after two weeks they took them out and then it was just back to life that's that's great to that the physical injury was not so severe. I'm wondering about the emotional aspect of it because right now the reason we're talking about this case is it's like that video has made its way online.

A lot of people are talking about it. Today, as you're, I'm sure people are trying to get a word from you and to talk more about it. How is that going? I've been talking to a lot of people about it. I've been trying to tell my story. to multiple people, but not anybody important, not anybody like you. So that's why I'm doing this interview so that I can get the truth out.

I appreciate that. So what is your side of the story? What are people not understanding? Well, a lot of people have it misconstruited. I'm thinking that it was like my stepdad or my action. dad but it was neither it was just my mom's boyfriend at the time and um also there's a lot of people don't understand about my mother with her pants down she was using the restroom at the time and um she heard the commotion about him saying that he was going to shoot me and um she came out of the

restroom to see what was going on I'm glad you cleared that up um because I I know people were wondering about that. So let's just take a step back. Before we even get into that day, your relationship with West. I mean, what was it like? Me and him had a good relationship, honestly, for a long time. Things just got out of hand that particular evening. They had been recently throughout the time.

throughout the last month that he was alive me and him started having arguments and he was impaired a lot so to be clear what I mean what were you guys disagreeing about I didn't have any disagreements with him he just he didn't I don't know he just didn't like me honestly but it's interesting you said that

because you said you had a good relationship with him But something changed. You mentioned that was he drinking? Yeah. Was he taking substances? Yeah. He was drinking. Uh-huh.

How long had he been seeing your mother? They were together for five years. Five years. Wow. Wow. And so during that time, but generally, you know, what was your interaction with him? Yeah. The relationship, it was good.

They never argued, honestly. It wasn't bad. seemed like a good couple, but I don't know. And you never had real, like, a problem like this before, never got into a fight with him, anything like that? No. I hadn't had been in a fight with him. By the way, how did your mom meet?

Not any physical fights. But like verbal, you had verbal disagreements with him. Yeah. Yeah. And how do they meet your mom and Mr. West? Um, I think they met at AA. Okay. Gotcha.

So let's talk about what happened that day. There's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of people looking at the video. Walk us through what happened that day. How did this all got started? So basically everybody in the house was impaired that day, me and myself included. You can probably hear my voice in the video. I wasn't, I was under the influence of I'm not going to say what.

So you guys were all under the influence of something. How did it escalate to him wanting to take, to have a gun out and wanting to shoot you? Oh, I don't even know, because I was in my room chilling at the time. I was on my laptop, and I just walked back into my room because I heard something they were arguing, so I was just going out there, and I looked, and I got back in my room because it wasn't really into my business. And I heard him start yelling and saying, like, oh, I would kill him or something. And then he comes into my room and starts pointing a gun at me.

so that's when I started filming was because I knew that he was going to come down to my room because he didn't like me and I knew that he was like messed up that night like messed up so I just started recording because I knew that he was going to like come in my room on some weird did you even know he had a gun like have you ever seen him have that gun before I knew I knew he had a gun and we all had guns in there right and what did and so he comes at you with a gun Were you shocked or were you like, he's not serious. He's just messing around. No, honestly, I didn't care.

I thought he wasn't going to shoot me. I didn't really think that he, like, had the goal to be real. Mm-hmm. And he's never done that before. He's never taken out the gun before, done anything like that? No, he had never done that to me. I mean, we'd shooting him off before. But, like, what was the reason he did that?

You said, like, he didn't like you. there was some sort of disagree he was he having a fight with your mom and then took out the gun and then came to you was it about you and he was really messed up and yeah he was he was an angry drunk if he was on brown liquor he was angry like at the world he was just looking for a fight basically so that this fight came down to my room and like was pointing a gun and then waving it around and saying that he was going to kill me and all this blah, blah. And you took out the video in the hopes to stop him

or to record what he's doing to, like, give it to police later on? No, and I didn't care about the police at the time. I didn't think he was going to shoot me, to be real. I just started recording him to make him look like to show him the next day how he acted

so that he could feel bad about it or whatever. Did you also think he might not remember what he did? Like, had he ever been drunk before or intoxicated? Like that's a kid before where he didn't remember? I'm not going to elaborate too much on that, though. Okay. So you got out of the room, you confront him, and you say in the video, you know,

you're going to shoot my mom because he made a comment that he was going to shoot you and your mom. What happened there? So that's why I came out of my room because he was like, I heard him say something. I'm a blow his brains out and yours. And then that's when I walked out of my room. and he was just standing there and uh yeah and he fires a shot at you and it hits your ear what was your reaction thought like were you just completely in shock because you don't hear anything in the video but you see blood droplets and you hear silence for a little bit um honestly

i didn't even feel uh like it didn't even hurt that bad um it just went through my ear and then i didn't even realize i got shot actually until i see you know until I started feeling blood, like, hit my shirt and, like, start falling on the ground. Yeah, the bullet also went into the wall. By the way, what cases like this show you is just how unpredictable the world is, right? Well, that is why I want to take a minute to thank Attorney Tom and Associates for sponsoring this episode of Sidebar. Because stuff happens, and sometimes you're going to need a lawyer. But finding the right legal help is so important.

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So with attorney Tom and his team, you're not just hiring a lawyer. You're getting powerful allies who are committed to justice and your well-being. So if you've suffered an injury and you need legal support, click the attorney tom.com slash sidebar link pinned in the comments for a free consultation or dial 855 Tom wins. All right, let's get back to this video story. So in the video, what's it called? The bullet hits you, you're bleeding, you run outside. What happens after that after the video shuts off?

Um, okay, so I run outside and I like, you look up that address. There's a lot of land. It was on two and a half acres or something like that. I can't remember there. One and a half. I just went and I ran and I started hiding behind like trees and stuff, like down the road. And then I call the cops. And where was your mom?

And, uh, I don't know. I just left the whole house. did she run out at any point oh actually no my mom my mom right out too I remember calling for her yeah and then when police came to the scene what walk us through what you observed from that

like what happened when police arrived police were there first but they just told me to like stand behind behind their car or something like that so they were like basically getting they were setting up to like swat the house like basically when i went back into that house that next day there was every single window in that house at 19 out of 21 of

the windows had gotten shot now with tear gas and flash bangs because like i guess he had a standoff with them and then shot himself in the head so yeah you didn't observe like Like, how long were you on scene for when this happened or were you, did you, were you taken to the hospital immediately and you found out afterwards what happened? Yeah, I was taken to the hospital immediately. That's why, like, I wish my mom would have done the interview too because she would have known that side. Right. And to be clear, we did, we were going to have her on, she chose not to come on, totally respect that. Let me ask you this.

So, just going back, after you run out of the house, after your mom runs out of the house, did Wes come out at any point? Or did you hear him in the house? Was he just staying in there? Honestly, I think that he thought he killed me. Wow. And that's why he killed himself. When you found out that he died, what was your reaction? I was just like, wow.

I didn't think that he would do it like that. I mean, you had it. It was either he spent the rest of his life in prison or he killed himself. I mean, those were his two options, basically. How are you and your mom doing about that? Because, I mean, he was in a relationship with your mom for five years, so, I mean, that's a loss. I mean, how did you and your mom feel about him dying? Well, he wasn't like my actual father or anything, so it didn't affect my life too much of his death.

But my mom had to go to counseling for months, and it was still. going probably every once in a lot. Yeah, I understand that. You know, it's a miracle you're okay, and I'm happy you're okay. Talk to us about what the recovery's been like with your ear. Oh, look, I'll show you the ear. Yeah. That is the ear.

So it is fine. I haven't had any plastic surgery on it. They did really good at Knoxville University of Knoxville. the recovery was it hurt it hurt for like a month and then I had the stitches in for I want to say like two two and a half weeks and then they came out wow I'm glad you're all right that's that's pretty crazy and your mom's okay she wasn't injured in any way during the course of this no yeah um being back in the house where this happened is it tough for you guys I'm not back in the house or no. Oh, you're not. Okay. So did you guys move out of that house or like what happened to the actual house? I think the house got given to his kid's mother. Okay. Let me ask you. I mean,

whose house was that? I should ask you that. I mean, why were you guys all in the same house at that night? Well, I was renting to stay there at that time. My mom and that's just where they live. Okay. Okay. My mom and Scott. Gotcha. Gotcha. So now that everybody's seeing this video and it's circulating online, you mentioned clearing up the record in terms of your relationship with him, why we observe certain things in the video. Is there anything else you want people to know about this? Or do you not like all the attention that's coming from this video? I mean, walk us through how you're feeling right now about it, everybody talking about it. It hasn't affected me in real life yet, but

online I don't know, the comments are funny. People can keep talking about it. I don't care. Anyone can talk about it. Anyone can post it. I don't really care. Well, listen, you know...

It is what it is. I mean, I'm I wasn't looking for fame, but it's not fame in a good way or anything. No, I get, look, it's a difficult situation. It's a sad situation. I mean, he was somebody that was in your life and your mom's life. And, you know, it's really tragic how that happened.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's terrible how it escalated and turned into that. But I'm glad you were able to clarify some things and clear up some things about what happened in that video. Again, I'm so happy you're okay. And I'm sorry for, you know, the loss for you and your mom and that you guys had to go through that. But, listen, Kyle, I really appreciate you taking the time coming here on sidebar and talking about this. And, you know, again, I'll extend the invite if your mom ever wants to come on and talk to us.

We have an open invite for her as well. But listen, thank you so much for taking the time. Yeah, of course, Jesse. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. Crazy video, crazy story. Please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber.

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