Jerome Mulligan threatened his neighbors but ended up with house arrest as a sentence. (Screenshot: WPXI)
Jerome Mulligan, 41, has been sentenced for threatening to kill his neighbors, but will not serve a single day in prison. Instead, he’ll going to be right back where he started – across the street from his victims.
After pleading guilty to retaliation against a witness or victim and a misdemeanor charge of terroristic threats, he is set to spend nine months on house arrest and five years on probation. There is a no-contact order throughout his sentence.
“It’s very on edge to live here,” one of those neighbors, Tyler Rupert, told Pittsburgh NBC affiliate WPXI in a Wednesday report.
Mulligan and Rupert’s family live across the street from each other in the local borough of Seven Fields, Pennsylvania. Rupert says Mulligan surprisingly started threatening his family in incidents last year.
“One call, and you’re dead,” Mulligan said in one such incident, according to The Cranberry Eagle. “Your family is dead.”
Rupert, who has two kids with his wife, has said such threats happened while he was sitting on the front porch using an iPhone or answering emails.
The defendant would at times be armed, he said. In one incident, Mulligan was sitting on the hood of a car and starting down Rupert from across the street.
Police received images of the defendant from the family’s security footage.
Rupert told WPXI that one of the threats happened while he was out of town.
Read Related Also: Who Is Curtis 'Cousin Eddie' Smith, Alex Murdaugh's Alleged Hired Hitman?
“[My wife] said that Jerry Mulligan threatened to murder her and my son so as a father that’s terrifying,” Rupert said, recounting an incident that happened last year.
In another incident, Mulligan’s wife crossed the street and asked to speak to Rupert, but defendant Mulligan told her to “make that one call to Florida that we talked about last night,” the victim said.
Mulligan put a video on Instagram of Rupert’s home that day.
Police reportedly said that the defendant told them he believed his neighbor was pointing a laser into his home.
Rupert, however, told WPIX he had no idea why Mulligan would do all this.
“That has been the biggest question,” he said. “We have never actually spoken to Jerry, never said a word to him.”
Mulligan’s attorney of record did not immediately respond to a Law&Crime request for comment.
Rupert reportedly said, “It’s just unfortunate that his punishment is house arrest and it doesn’t really solve our problem or that we are asking for it to be different but he’s still there every single day.”
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
