POUGHKEEPSIE – Jurors in the murder case against 54-year-old Thomas Case of Pleasant Valley concluded five days of deliberations on Thursday without reaching a verdict. Deliberations will resume on Friday (today), May 15, 2026. Case, a retired cop with the Los Angeles Police Department, is accused of shooting his girlfriend’s son, Anthony Cuozzo, 20, at Case’s home on Rawls Road in Pleasant Valley on October 5, 2024.
Case was indicted for murder and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon by a grand jury. The trial commenced before Judge Karen Edelman-Reyes on April 28 and ended on May 7.
The homicide victim, Cuozzo, allegedly stabbed Case in the chest with a pocketknife before leaving the premises and calling his grandmother for a ride to her house on the night of the shooting. Cuozzo was on the phone with a 911 operator when Case fired four shots toward Cuozzo’s back, striking him three times. Cuozzo was pronounced dead at Vassar Brothers Medical Center later that night.
The shooting can be heard on the 911 recording between the dispatcher and Cuozzo, which was played for the jury on multiple occasions during the trial.
Case claims he followed Cuozzo down the driveway, stopped 17 yards behind the victim, and fired his weapon at least four times, striking Cuozzo in the back and body three times.
“We had a mentally-ill young man who just stabbed me, and he was armed with a knife,” . He then indicated that he was trying to keep Cuozzo’s mother and sister safe, as the reason for firing the gun. He also said that “He was a dangerous threat to the tenants of the corporation,” in justifying the shooting. Case owns the Bilmar Nursery Corporation, which owns the house at 26 Rawls Road, which is rented to tenants. Case provided another justification for shooting when he said, “I felt like my death was imminent.”
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