Retired cop shot and killed husband while targeting snake

John Kelly (Barrett Leber Funeral Home).

A retired police officer from New Jersey was sentenced to more than a decade in prison for shooting and killing his husband, also a former cop, while demonstrating how to kill a snake during a night of drinking.

Joseph Grieco, 38, was found guilty in January of first-degree aggravated manslaughter in the 2023 death of his husband, 44-year-old John Kelly, in Vienna Township. On Wednesday, a judge sentenced Grieco to 11 years in prison, the Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office said in a press release.

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Prosecutors said on the evening of July 25, 2023, the couple went drinking at a local VFW. The party continued with Grieco, Kelly and friends at their home. Grieco took out a Gen4 Glock Model 23 and started messing around with it. Partygoers warned Grieco that the gun was loaded.

Grieco was showing people how to kill a snake, NJ.com reported. The gun went off, striking Kelly, a former New York City police officer, in the torso. Paramedics responded and rushed Kelly to the hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead.

Grieco will have to serve 85% of his sentence before he’s eligible for parole. Prosecutors were seeking a 20-year prison sentence while the defense requested five years behind bars.