GEORGETOWN

The brother of a Georgetown man shot in North Yarmouth last month remains disappointed in a justice system that’s let the alleged assailant walk free, despite Friday’s murder indictment against the suspect.

Merrill “Mike” Kimball, 70, was indicted Friday by a Cumberland County grand jury on a single count of murder. Police said he shot Leon Kelley, 63, of Georgetown, at a North Yarmouth business on Oct. 3 during a family confrontation.

An indictment is not a finding of guilt; it is a finding that sufficient evidence exists to proceed to trial.

Police were called to Brown’s Bee Farm at 239 Greeley Road where Kimball and his wife, Karen Thurlow-Kimball had gone to retrieve honey. Family members confronted Kimball there, triggering a dispute during which Kelley was shot.

Kelley allegedly shoved Kimball, a smaller man, several times before Kimball shot him in what his attorney says was self-defense. Kelley was Brown’s son-in-law.

Joseph Kelley, the brother of Leon Kelley, says the man who shot his brother was only issued a summons for murder — the first time he knows of in the state of Maine anyone has been summonsed for murder, he said this morning.

With Kimball free, Kelley worries for the safety of his brother’s extended family.

“There’s some preferential treatment,” Joseph Kelley said of Kimball, whom he said he’s never met. “This guy had no reason to shoot him three times.”

Joseph Kelley argued that Kimball went to the farm with intent to kill someone.

He wasn’t there, so can’t say what spurred the confrontation, though he said this morning he’s heard that Brown may have thought Kimball was stealing from him.

Joseph Kelley said Brown, 94, wanted Kimball to leave the property. So his brother — the older, “gentle giant” of the three Kelley brothers — went out and asked Kimball to leave, “and my brother may have pushed him, but that’s still no reason to shoot him three times.”

The Portland Press Herald reported Kimball will remain free until he is formally arraigned on the charge, as early as today.

Joseph Kelley said it has been a time of turmoil and difficult to get details about what led to the shooting from authorities. He said members of the Maine State Police have hung up on him in his bid to have his questions answered.

“I feel cheated,” he said. “I feel that my brother’s been cheated. I feel that he’s just not getting his justice.

“They’re trying to make him look like a monster in the paper and he’s not,” Joseph Kelley said, adding the case should not be tried in the newspaper.

While he and the middle brother have had scrapes with the law, he said Leon Kelley did not; his brother was the peace keeper, he said.

“I guess all I can do is hope,” Kelley said of the legal process. “And try to be patient, but I’m getting really frustrated.”

This story was corrected to delete an erroneous reference to Karen Thurlow-Kimball’s father. 

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