A year after a frightening incident with a man dressed as a stormtrooper from “Star Wars,” Erin Napier revealed in an Instagram post why May the Fourth Be With You is not her favorite unofficial holiday.
Luke Skystalker?
Law has eye on ‘obsessed fan’
“We were filming ... when Ben started getting messages from lots of folks in town about a 54-year-old man dressed like a Star Wars stormtrooper, wearing an ankle monitor bracelet, who had come to town and was saying some very strange things,” Napier wrote in her post.
That man was John Gaffney of Santa Barbara, Calif., who was charged in April 2021 for making terrorist threats and brandishing a weapon in his neighborhood, according to the April 22, 2021 edition of Edhat, a media outlet in Santa Barbara. He was accused of pulling a firearm and a “taser” after a verbal altercation and the accuser reported “serious verbal threats” to harm him, just a month before visiting Laurel. He was wearing an ankle monitor when he was out and about in Laurel.
Gaffney was saying strange things such as, “God sent me here to protect the women of Laurel, specifically little Helen,” Napier wrote.
“He had bought a house a block from ours and was living in it with nothing but a suitcase and these toys for when my 3-year-old daughter, ‘comes over to visit,’ Napier wrote. “Ben saw red, his blood boiled.”
Gaffney had dolls named after the Napiers’ children, reports indicated, and, at the time, Napier was "terrified and 9.5 months pregnant” at the time. In the two weeks that followed, Gaffney found Mallory and Jim Rasberry’s baby girl on walks with her nanny and said unsettling things, Napier wrote.
“We all had 24-hour security officers at home, while we slept, while we worked,” she continued. “Helen asked who they were and why they were here, and we never told her the truth. ‘They work with us! They’re friends of ours who are staying with us for a little while!’”
A year later, Napier wrote that she still thinks of the incident every day, but it doesn’t scare her anymore.
“I’m thankful for the way our neighborhood guarded us and put up a hedge of protection when we needed it and further validated what I already knew: Protect your kids in the online world as much as you can,” Napier
wrote.
The Leader-Call reported last May that the stars of “Home Town” filed a restraining order against Gaffney for making “disturbing comments” about their children, and the “May The Fourth” man was forced to leave Laurel after his bond was revoked in California for violating the terms of his release on the felony charges there.
When Gaffney made his way to Laurel, he sent out brochures offering a $1,000 reward for anyone who could help him find a home for sale in the historic district so he could get Ben and Erin Napier to renovate it for him. His Facebook page shows that he is a real-estate broker in Santa Barbara.
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