Casper Man Arrested for Assaulting Woman With Handgun, Child Endangerment
Casper police officers arrested a man Thursday after he allegedly assaulted his wife with a handgun and threatened to kill her.
Jason Joshua Gariety was booked into jail on recommended charges of felony domestic assault, possession of methamphetamine, possession of marijuana and child endangerment with methamphetamine.
According to an affidavit of probable cause, Gariety's wife arrived at the Casper Police Department at roughly 2 p.m. Thursday and reported that Gariety had assaulted her with a handgun. She told police that she was had been showering when Gariety kicked in the door, grabbed her by her hair and dragged her into their bedroom.
There, Gariety allegedly used a handgun to hit the woman on the left side of her head, then started to load the gun and told the woman that "she was going to die today." The woman's son was present in the house at the time and called his grandmother. The grandmother arrived and Gariety hid the gun, telling his wife to make her go away.
When the grandmother picked up the child, the victim saw her chance to escape and left. She drove straight to the police department.
Police set up a perimeter at 1114 St. Mary Street and an officer was sent to the grandmother's residence until family members could be secured safely at the police department.
A search warrant for the home on St. Mary Street was secured and officers executed that search warrant at roughly 4:30 p.m. Officers contacted Gariety via telephone and asked him to walk out of the house, which he did. He was taken into custody.
Inside the home, officers seized a loaded .38-caliber revolver as well as ammunition, a box containing marijuana paraphernalia and a case containing methamphetamine paraphernalia. Blood swabs were also taken from a bathroom wall.
The victim further told police that Gariety had been violent for years, saying he had caused her to lose her left eye and she had lied to protect him. A detective noted that the woman's right eye only opened in a partial slit and was discolored as compared to the left eye.
Gariety, when interviewed by a detective, initially denied that he had been in a physical fight with the victim, but later admitted that he had been physical with her due to jealousy and methamphetamine use. He allegedly admitted that meth and marijuana were in the home and that he had kicked in the bathroom door.
Gariety allegedly said that he grabbed the victim and drug her back into the home "as she screamed for help and tried to get out a window, while naked." He said he had retrieved a gun in order to kill himself and loaded it with six bullets. He denied pointing it at the victim or striking her with it.