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Prosecutor suspended for pulling gun in response to decorations

Posted at 6:56 PM, Oct 29, 2015
and last updated 2015-10-29 19:56:38-04

An effort to get a West Virginia prosecutor's office into the Halloween spirit took a dark turn earlier this month.

Upset that secretaries had decorated the Logan County Prosecutor's Office with fake spiders, assistant prosecutor Chuck White brought a gun into the office. The gun was reportedly not loaded.

WCHS in Charleston reported that White has been suspended indefinitely.

The incident took place on Oct. 5. Logan County prosecutor John Bennett told WCHS in Charleston that White never threatened to shoot anyone other than the fake spiders.

"He said they had spiders everyplace and he said he told them it wasn't funny, and he couldn't stand them, and he did indeed get a gun out. It had no clip in it, of course they wouldn't know that, I wouldn't either if I looked at it, to tell you the truth," Bennett told WCHS.

"Quite naturally, the ladies were concerned, as I would have been. Anybody would be, I would think, with a gun no matter where it was," he added.

White has been with the office for five years.

"I never saw it coming, that's for sure. Obviously, I wouldn't have even hired him if I had seen it coming. And the fact that he's been there five years and we haven't had any incidents like this also, to me, is a pretty good indication it's certainly out of the ordinary," Bennett told WCHS.

According to Logan County Police, an investigation is ongoing.