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D.A. won't seek charges in fatal shooting Thursday Jan 26, 2017 at 7:35 PM By Chris Bristol of the Daily Courier The Josephine County District Attorney's Office said it won't seek charges against a young man who shot and killed a man in the O'Brien area last year. In a statement issued Wednesday, Chief Deputy District Attorney Lisa Turner said 46-year-old Jeffrey W. Hunsaker was shot at his home on Arrowhead Drive by the 22-year-old son of a man he was assaulting. She also said that based on the totality of circumstances, prosecutors do not believe they can disprove self-defense — in this case, defense of others — beyond a reasonable doubt. The shooting on Sept. 29 occurred at the same location where Hunsaker was wounded in an exchange of gunfire in April 2015 that claimed the life of a 43-year-old Utah man named Warren Batie. In July, 14 months after that shooting, the District Attorney's Office issued a news release saying a grand jury had declined to bring charges against Hunsaker for Batie's slaying. Instead, the grand jury indicted Hunsaker on two counts of felon in possession of a firearm from the shooting and drug and weapons charges stemming from a previous incident in October 2014. That case was still pending when Hunsaker was killed two months later. In her statement, Turner said the latest shooting was preceded earlier in the evening by an argument between Hunsaker and a man named Dale Curtis who lived in a separate residence on the same property. Turner said Hunsaker's wife later told investigators that Hunsaker remained angry about the argument and eventually left his residence to confront Curtis. During the ensuing confrontation, Hunsaker began assaulting Curtis, whose son, Anthony, was present. Turner said Anthony Curtis shot Hunsaker once with a .410-gauge shotgun. Turner said prosecutors have the burden of disproving a claim of self-defense or defense of others, and that based on the circumstances in this case, prosecutors concluded they could not disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. "Thus the State will not be filing charges against Anthony Curtis for the shooting death of Jeffrey Hunsaker," she wrote. "It should be noted," Turner added, "that use of physical force … is a case-by-case, fact-specific inquiry in determining if such actions are justified under the law." The shooting was the fifth of six homicides in Josephine County last year. All six homicides in the county this year have occurred in rural areas of the county: three in the Illinois Valley, one in Murphy, one in Hugo and one west of Grants Pass.