It was a sibling rivalry that almost had a biblical ending.
Call it Cain and Mabel.
Believing that his older sister set him up to be robbed of his guns, marijuana dealer Jeremy Anderson went over to her house near 25th and Emmet Streets in Omaha on a Monday morning in May.
According to court documents:
About 9:15 a.m. May 7, Theresa Anderson, then 30, saw her 27-year-old brother, Jeremy, pull up in a white Chrysler 300.
He got out and began walking toward her house, brandishing a handgun. Fearing he’d come inside — where children were — she and a male friend met him on the front stoop.
She stayed on the porch while the man, Timothy Qualls, tried to restrain Anderson. Qualls began wrestling with Anderson, holding him back , pushing the gun away and telling him, “My kids are in there.”
Theresa Anderson told police Qualls urged her to go inside, so she backed up onto the front porch.
Jeremy Anderson fired twice , hitting his sister once in the stomach and once in the neck.
Remarkably — and perhaps fortunately for Jeremy Anderson — Theresa Anderson survived.
Earlier this week, Douglas County District Judge Greg Schatz sentenced Jeremy Anderson to 8 to 10 years in prison. He faced up to 100 years in prison. In a plea bargain, Anderson had pleaded no contest to first-degree assault and attempted gun use.
Asked how many times he had heard of a brother shooting his sister, prosecutor Eric Wells responded: “Never.”
The sister and her friends lived to tell officers the root of the brother-sister beef.
According to court documents:
Jeremy Anderson operated a marijuana-dealing enterprise in Council Bluffs. In fact, after the shooting, he continued to sell marijuana until he was arrested in June.
Before the shooting, a thief or thieves stole a couple of handguns from Anderson.
According to Omaha police, he believed that his sister or her wife set him up to be burglarized of his guns. The wife told police that Jeremy Anderson ran her off the road and into a pole near 30th Street and Sorensen Parkway on May 6, the day before the shooting. She also said he had issues due to his substance abuse and drug dealing.
Anderson’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Jami Jacobs, had urged the judge to put him on probation. She noted a history of family dysfunction. Anderson was raised, part-time, by his sister after their parents died when they were kids.
He developed trust and resentment issues after he ended up in the home of others who abused him and spent the money that was meant for him upon his parents’ death.
Jacobs noted that since his arrest, Anderson had gone through therapy. He also had begun working as a dispatcher for a trucking company — his boss even attended sentencing.
For his part, Anderson apologized for his actions.
“I’m just ready to move on with my life, sir,” he told the judge.
It’ll be a bit.
Under state law, which cuts most sentences in half, Anderson must serve four years before he is eligible for parole; absent parole, he’ll serve five years in prison.
