CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A Charleston attorney has been found “not criminally responsible” for a shooting that happened at his home last year. The charges were dismissed Tuesday against Mark Bramble.
The 50-year-old Bramble was arrested last August and charged with attempted murder and wanton endangerment after police said he fired multiple shots from his house in a South Hills community. No one was injured.
Kanawha County Circuit Judge Carrie Webster agreed with three forensic psychiatrists who examined Bramble and reached similar conclusions about his state of mind during the incident. They said he was competent to stand trial but not criminally responsible. One doctor said he was bipolar at the time.
(Read Judge Webster’s order dismissing charges here.)
The charges were dismissed with prejudice, which means they cannot be filed again. The special prosecutor in the case did not object to the dismissal motion from Bramble’s attorney.
Bramble was hired in 2012 as an assistant attorney general in the state Attorney General’s Office. He submitted his resignation just days before the shooting.
A neighbor spoke with MetroNews right after the shooting took place.
“I believe it’s domestic because the man’s wife, girlfriend, whatever came running down the street,” Lacy said. “They placed her in an ambulance. They took her away and then brought her back.”
The neighbor reported hearing a second round of shooting, which sounded “like an AK-47 or a machine gun-type weapon.”
Bramble spent time in jail and at a state mental hospital. He remains under care.