The Gun Clicked Seven Times in a Crowded Restaurant. It Never Fired.

It was opening night at Sabira, a new Italian restaurant in downtown Toledo. Matthew Exton walked in from next door, ordered a drink, and had it sent to a table across the room — his ex-wife's table, where her family was sitting. Then he spat toward them and walked out.

He came back a few minutes later with a Colt Defender handgun in his pocket.

Prosecutors say Exton walked up to the table, pulled out the gun, pointed it at his ex-wife's chest, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He pulled it again. And again. The gun's safety was still on — every pull just produced a click, once for each of the seven rounds loaded in the magazine.

His ex-wife yelled "gun." A waiter, later identified as Tracy Cole Jr., tackled Exton to the ground with the help of other patrons before he could try again.

A Lucas County jury found Exton, 43, guilty of attempted murder and two counts of felonious assault, along with firearm specifications that add mandatory prison time. He was acquitted of one additional assault count. Exton has maintained he never actually fired the weapon. "I did not fire. I did not hurt her. I did not try to hurt her," he said.

That defense didn't move the jury. Prosecutors argued intent doesn't require a bullet to leave the chamber — only that Exton meant to kill her, and that a safety switch, not a change of heart, was the only thing standing between him and her.

Exton wasn't a stranger to courtrooms. He'd worked as a prosecutor in Michigan before losing that job, then built a private practice in Sylvania, Ohio, and Traverse City, Michigan, handling divorce, family, and bankruptcy cases — the same kind of case he and his ex-wife had just gone through themselves. He and his ex-wife divorced in 2024, and he later told others he was frustrated with how the proceedings had gone. The Ohio Supreme Court suspended his law license in May 2025, a month after the restaurant confrontation. By his own account, he'd also become homeless in the aftermath of the divorce.

Exton faces up to 25 years in prison when a Lucas County judge sentences him later this month. He wasn't in the courtroom for the verdict — he watched it alone, on a video feed piped into his holding cell.

His ex-wife lived through the one night everything could have ended for her, in a restaurant full of strangers, because of a safety switch and a waiter who didn't hesitate.