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Mother Receives Probation for Stun Gun Attack

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Despite pleas from a prosecutor for jail time, a Ventura woman was sentenced to five years of probation Friday for attacking a pregnant woman with a stun gun during a child-custody battle.

Susan M. Gedney, 34, also was ordered to serve 30 days in the Ventura County work-release program. Work-release participants serve eight-hour shifts on county work details scheduled at their convenience.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Frederick A. Jones also imposed a 60-day jail sentence but said Gedney will not have to serve it if she stays out of trouble for a year. She has no prior criminal record.

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The victim, who suffered only minor injuries, was said to be satisfied with the sentence. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Kim George Gibbons said Gedney deserved a six-month jail term. Assault with a stun gun carries a maximum term of three years in jail.

The sentencing occurred in the Hall of Justice, two floors above the cafeteria where the assault took place on the morning after Christmas last year.

Court records give this account:

Gedney was due in court to work out a joint-custody arrangement for her 10-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son. Her ex-husband, Brian Gedney, and his current wife, Terri, had custody of the children over the holidays.

Susan Gedney approached Terri Gedney and the children in the cafeteria, grabbed her son by the arm and said: “Let’s go, guys.” Terri Gedney held the boy’s other arm and insisted that she had custody of the children until 4 p.m.

Susan Gedney pulled an electric stun gun from her coat and zapped Terri Gedney on the arm three or four times. The woman screamed in pain and let the child go. A sheriff’s deputy in the cafeteria arrested Susan Gedney before she could leave with the children.

According to a probation officer’s report, the daughter told the deputy: “My mom’s crazy and she needs help.”

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The probation report quoted Brian Gedney, who divorced Susan in 1984, as saying she “belongs in a mental institution.” The defendant’s mother described her as a sociopath, and has obtained a restraining order to keep her daughter away, according to the report.

A court psychologist said Gedney often uses “poor judgment to obtain her objectives” and needs counseling in “stress and anger management.”

But Susan Gedney’s attorney, David L. Shain, said a psychologist he hired found no evidence of mental illness or sociopathy. “I think the lady has been painted as something she is not,” he said.

Gedney, a registered nurse, was supported in a number of testimonial letters to the judge from friends, employers and her minister.

“It’s a classically tragic post-divorce situation,” Shain said. “I’m not justifying what happened. That would be silly. But there were great pressures and stresses underlying that situation.”

Terri Gedney, who lives with her husband in Weed in Northern California, suffered bruises and burns in the attack and experienced cramps afterward, according to the probation report. She was two months pregnant at the time but the attack apparently did not damage the fetus, the report said.

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Brian and Terri Gedney have been awarded sole custody of the children since the attack.

“My wife feels fine about it,” Brian Gedney said after the sentencing. “This is going to be beneficial for the kids.”

He said jail time hanging over his ex-wife’s head will discourage her from bothering them. She might have lost her job as a registered nurse if she had been sent to jail, Brian Gedney said.

“We might even get child support out of her,” he said.

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