Word count: 1043 | Reading time: 5 min read
Pretzel Logic
An ex-cop’s accused in a neighborhood tiff. Is there a cover-up?
As fights go, this one was about as mismatched as Tyson-McNeely.
On one side was an allegedly gun-wielding man named Tom Feilke, a guy in his 40s, built like a steam engine. On the other side was Roma Otterson, all of five feet and a buck twenty-seven.
Unlike the Tyson bout, however, the outcome of the Feilke-Otterson row is in dispute.
Otterson and a half-dozen witnesses claim that Otterson’s assailant pulled out the gun, threatened to “blow away” her and her neighbors and then struck her in the mouth with the piece. Then, they charge, he waived a “hit list” of other neighbors he would retaliate against. And then he pointed the gun at neighbors aiding Otterson.
Feilke’s brother and sister say no way. They say it was Otterson who attacked Feilke, who they claim doesn’t even carry a gun. Their brother, they say, was just in the neighborhood checking up on the house. The Feilkes, they say, are the victims here.
Thomas Feilke was on vacation and unavailable for comment.
On the surface, this does not seem like a case for Sherlock Holmes.
Otterson has witnesses.
She has medical records showing an injury to her mouth.
Neighbors gave the cops a description of the assailant and, better yet, a nearly complete license plate number — an FOP license plate, no less.
Still, 10 days later as of Sept. 6, there have been no arrests.
Sgt. Ron Marker, the detective assigned to the case, says there are too many conflicting statements given by those who witnessed the incident to make an arrest.
Otterson, who says she and her family are living in fear of retaliation, grouse that it may be more than conflicting statements.
Tom Feilke is an ex-cop. He has two brothers who are still on the force. And his late mother Sarah was also in uniform, as a crossing guard.
The whole thing started, as these dust-ups often do on South Etting Street, over a tiff between neighbors.
Otterson claims the genesis of this latest Hatfield-McCoy spat came on Aug. 25, when Deborah Feilke, who lives across Etting, complained about Otterson’s daughter throwing rocks at her car.
Complained is putting it mildly, says Otterson.
Feilke, she says, “started screaming at me, called me a nigger, said she would get me by selling her house to ‘niggers’ and fix me and all my white trash friends on the street. She said she was going to get her brother to fix us all.”
Otterson filed a civilian criminal complaint with the district attorney’s office, charging her neighbor with “threatening to have her brother hit” her.
DA spokesman Bill Davol says his office is investigating the incident to determine if Otterson’s complaint against Deborah Feilke should be dropped or sent to court. In all likelihood, says Davol, the case will wind up in court.
“If this is not a case where somebody’s dog pissed on a neighbor’s lawn, it usually goes to court,” he says, adding that “this is no big deal. We get 100 of these a day.”
Feilke does not deny that she complained to Otterson about the rock-throwing. Or that she called police in the past to complain about the Ottersons and their friends making noise late at night and shooting off fireworks.
But Feilke — who says she is the one living in fear, a fear that has forced her out of the neighborhood where she was born and lived her entire 38 years — does deny threatening Otterson.
“The only thing I said was to the daughter,” says Feilke. “I told her that if she wanted to throw rocks at cars, she should throw them at her father’s car. But Roma didn’t appreciate that. She bumped up against me. And she did the same thing to my brother Tom.”
Those who say Thomas Feilke attacked Otterson kind of laugh at the notion Otterson would go after Feilke.
“He was so big I had to get up on the third step of my stoop just to look him in the eye,” says Otterson.
Witnesses — admittedly Otterson’s friends — say it went down like this.
Otterson was a few houses south on the block, helping a neighbor named Ed Hughes sew his daughter’s dress.
Hughes, Otterson and another neighbor, Carla Fego, say that a man parked his truck on Etting, got out and walked up to Otterson’s house.
“I thought the guy was a utility guy,” says Hughes. “They got into an argument, but I still thought he was a utility guy. It wasn’t until I saw him hit her in the mouth and heard someone yell ‘stop, he has a piece’ that I realized what was going on.”
Hughes says he ran after the alleged assailant with a stick, only to have the gun pointed on him.
“It was long, black and big,” says Hughes.
Other neighbors who saw the incident say they heard Feilke threaten Otterson.
“I heard him say ‘You’ve been fucking with my sister,’” says Carla Fego. “He said, ‘I’ll solve the fucking problem right now. I’ll shoot you and your whole family.’ That’s when he pulled out the gun and whacked her.”
Understandably, the Ottersons are freaked out by all this. They say that Roma’s in-laws now check up on her every half-hour or so while her husband is out at his job at the Police Deparment garage.
“Why is this taking so long?” asks Otterson.
Thomas Johanson, Otterson’s attorney and a former asst. DA, asks the same question.
He stops just short of accusing the police of delaying the investigation to protect their own. However, he does say that “enough is enough” and that he is getting ready to “push this upstairs.”
Detective Marker — who’s been out in the neighborhood several times on this case — denies any cover-up or delay and says he “doesn’t care what Johanson pushes.”
Deborah Feilke says she is the one in danger and is afraid the neighbors will retailiate against her again before she can fully move out of her home. She says that they have already thrown battery acid on her car and flattened her tires.
Who’s right?
Who knows.
But maybe its time to let the courts straighten it out.
