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Rural Galva man found not guilty in shooting-related death

A Knox County jury reportedly took less than an hour and a half to deliberate before finding a rural Galva man not guilty of the murder of a teenager whose vehicle crashed near his property last year.

Knox County Circuit Court records indicate 59-year-old James Love was found not guilty Friday of First-Degree Murder, Aggravated Battery, and Aggravated Discharge of a Firearm.

Love was arrested in late-June of last year, after authorities claim he shot 19-year-old Xavier Hartman in the leg, after a vehicle Hartman was in crashed near Love’s rural Galva home.
Authorities claimed when Love left his home to see what had happened, he got into a confrontation with Hartman and fired the shot that caused damage to a main artery.

Prosecutors re-filed murder charges in the case, after a Knox County grand jury initially filed lesser counts. A judge then didn’t think Love should be tried on the murder charge, but indicated that the case as a whole had to continue.

The Register-Mail reports a jury deliberated just 75 minutes before coming to a consensus after the week-long trial.

(Pool file photo)

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