“We think that the law enforcement involved committed many crimes and lied about our client and tried to set him up for prosecuting him when he committed no crimes,” said Ellis Boyle, an attorney representing Kloepfer in a civil case stemming from the shooting. “It's a crying shame that this is what the justice system is in America.”

However, Kimberly Spahos, executive director of the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys, which appointed Special Prosecutor Lance Sigmon to review the case and determine whether to press charges, said the decision was based in legal reasoning.

“I cannot comment specifically on every statute Mr. Sigmon reviewed,” Spahos said. “However, he certainly reviewed the full investigation and made his decision based on a variety of case law and legal precedent.”

According to the N.C. State Bar directory, Sigmon resides in Newton and has been admitted to the state bar since August 1988. A LinkedIn profile says he served as chief assistant district attorney in the 36th Prosecutorial District from 2015 until retiring in 2023.

“Thank God, we have a corresponding civil justice system, where my clients are still able to pursue their rights and hold these people accountable,” Boyle said. “Because obviously the criminal justice system has failed miserably, and these people are not only walking free, but they have the imprimatur of a quote unquote special prosecutor saying that he's not going to hold them accountable.”

The shooting took place on Dec. 13, 2022, after a neighbor called 911 claiming she was concerned that Jason Harley Kloepfer, 41 at the time, had hurt his wife, Alison Mahler, and that she had heard him threaten the whole neighborhood. Citing a potential hostage situation, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office requested assistance from the Cherokee Indian Police Department’s SWAT team, which arrived in the early morning hours.

At least two rounds hit Kloepfer when three CIPD officers fired at him — as Mahler stood directly behind him — shortly before 5 a.m. One entered through his chest and lacerated his liver, cutting through his stomach and the lining of his heart, cracking his ribs and scattering shrapnel in his chest. A second struck just above his elbow, “blowing a tunnel through his flesh and muscle,” according to a lawsuit he filed in June.

In the hours after the shooting, the CCSO said the officers fired after Kloepfer engaged in a “verbal altercation” with them and confronted him as he emerged from his camper trailer. He was charged with two misdemeanors as a result.

However, Kloepfer later released home security video that shows him coming to the door with his hands up, in compliance with police orders. Shots rang out seconds later. The charges were dropped in the weeks following the video’s release. In their responses to the complaint, the officers who fired claimed they did so because they believed the police robot Kloepfer held above his head in his right hand — a robot the police had sent inside to assess the scene — to be a gun.

In June, Kloepfer filed a lawsuit seeking millions in damages that claimed officers violated his constitutional rights before the first shot was even fired. The first deputies arrived at his home at 11:17 p.m. but did not find evidence of the emergency hostage situation to which they had been alerted, and they did not have a search warrant to fully investigate the premises. However, they remained on the property for hours, covering Kloepfer’s outdoor surveillance cameras shortly after midnight, hours before a search warrant was finally issued at 2:14 a.m. The lawsuit claims this violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

The lawsuit, tentatively slated for trial in August 2025, names 29 defendants from both the EBCI and CCSO who together face more than 200 claims. However, following Sigmon’s decision, none of those defendants will be held criminally liable for their actions.

“The civil case is plowing ahead full steam,” Boyle said. “We are in discovery, and now is when the fun stuff happens. Now is when the truth is extracted, and eventually brought to the light to the public. Because apparently that's not going to happen in the criminal justice system.”