A man who was severely injured in a 2022 police shooting at his home in Cherokee County won’t see a resolution to his civil suit until August 2025 at the earliest, according to a recent filing in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. 

We can’t say for certain whether Cherokee County Sheriff Dustin Smith backed into a literal bush as the events of Dec. 13, 2022, unfolded, but at this point it’s pretty clear that in the aftermath he did his best metaphorical impression of the infamous Homer Simpson meme.   

As police shooting victim Jason Harley Kloepfer’s sprawling federal lawsuit  makes its way through court, where he’s seeking millions of dollars in damages, some attorneys are speculating that it has the potential to spur a first-of-its-kind ruling on the limits of sovereign immunity, a defense that often protects Native American tribes from lawsuits. 

Tribal officers in Cherokee County shooting say they thought victim was armed