Mason Larrison
The former Columbus East High School football player who received a suspended sentence last summer for threatening another student with a handgun is now back in the Bartholomew County Jail.
Mason D. Larrison, 19, 3572 Grange Drive, is scheduled to have an initial hearing at 3 p.m. Monday before Circuit Court Judge Kelly Benjamin on a petition to revoke probation.
On April 3, Larrison plead guilty to a felony charge of intimidation, where the defendant draws or uses a deadly weapon as a Level 5 felony. Two months later, on June 14, Benjamin sentenced the defendant to a four-year prison term, but suspended the sentence.
Larrison was ordered to spend the next 180 days in a work release program. After completion, he would be on home detention for 90 days as part of the 912 days he was ordered to serve on probation.
The petition to revoke was filed on Dec. 15. It states Larrison violated the terms of his probation by removing the GPS bracelet from his ankle on or about Dec. 12. Larrison remained at large until he was recaptured at 4:29 a.m. on Dec. 14 by Bartholomew County Sheriff deputies.
The original offense occurred on Feb. 2 at the Columbus East gymnasium where the basketball team was playing Brownstown Central, according to court documents.
Investigators say that when Larrison saw a male student sitting next to his ex-girlfriend, he retrieved a handgun from his car and searched for the male student. The handgun was purchased from a friend a few weeks before the incident, and secretly kept it in the car, the defendant testified during the sentencing hearing.
The defendant denied his motive was jealousy. Instead, Larrison told the court he was angry because the intended victim had called another friend a vulgar name.
For the next 15 to 20 minutes, Larrison sent threatening online messages to the male, stating he had a gun and wanted to kill him, a probable cause affidavit stated.
After his male rival got into the backseat of a vehicle occupied by two front seat riders parked in the school parking lot, Larrison ran up to the car, pulled out a Taurus 9mm handgun, cocked it and began pointing it at the occupants, a court affidavit states.
“I wasn’t in a good mental state,” Larrison said last June on the witness stand. “My finger was never on the trigger. It was only a scare tactic.”
Although Larrison tried to get the intended victim to step out of the vehicle, the car sped from the scene and Larrison’s efforts to follow it were unsuccessful, police reports state.
While on the stand, Larrison said he suffered from depression, bipolar disorder and occasional hallucinations. He admitted he was not taking medication at the time of the offense, and claimed to have attempted suicide a few weeks earlier.
Benjamin says she gave Larrison a suspended sentence because he had no criminal history, appeared genuinely remorseful, was taking his prescribed medication as directed, seemed to understand the value of his therapy and had a good support system, Benjamin said.
