UPDATE (Aug. 23, 2018) — Tammy Brickles pleaded guilty to battery. She was sentenced to 180 days in jail, with the entirety of the sentence suspended. She was given a year of probation and ordered to have no contact with Horton. In addition, she’ll have to undergo anger management counseling.
GREENFIELD, Ind. – A custody exchange of a baby in a busy Greenfield park ended with a gun fired and two grandmothers in handcuffs Monday. Police said the child’s father jumped in to the grab the gun.
Jon Brickles said it started with a fight over child visitation rights during an exchange of his 1-year-old daughter with her mother. He said while he has visitation rights, he is seeking full custody.
“That’s where the bullet hit,” he said pointing to a dent in the pavement at Riley Park.
Police said the child’s grandmothers, Tammy Brickles, 47, and Cristy Horton, 45, got into an argument. When Brickles pushed Horton, police said Horton pulled out a handgun.
“My throat dropped down to my stomach,” Brickles pregnant fiancé, Cherokee Boyd, said.
Brickles said the only thing he could think about was keeping his family safe.
“I put my hand on the gun and pushed it away from everybody else and got her spun around and got the gun pointed at the ground. The gun went off, shot into the ground and finally got it away from her,” Brickles said.
It happened on a busy night with other children at the park.
“A lot of people around at that time of night, a very dangerous situation developed from something that shouldn’t have been dangerous, should have been a simple child exchange,” Greenfield Police Detective Lt. Randy Ratliff said.
Ratliff said while a situation like this is unusual, they do see disputes.
“Child exchanges are at least a weekly occurrence where we have issues at them if not more often than weekly,” Ratliff said. “Usually it’s just verbal arguments.”
Investigators have tips during child exchanges.
“People are much less likely to do things which may be unfortunate if there are more people there, it’s in public and they know that they’re being recorded,” Hancock County Prosecutor Brent Eaton said. “That’s not going to prevent every situation but those are some simple things people can do to make things less likely to occur.”
Moving forward, Brickles said they plan to meet in places like the police department parking lot.