National
Porch-Shooting Suspect Didn’t Know Gun Was Loaded
Theodore Wafer sits in court at his second-degree murder trial in Detroit on Wednesday July 23, 2014. Wafer isaccused of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Renisha McBride on the front-porch of his Dearborn Heights, Mich., home.(AP Photo/Detroit News, David Coates)
DETROIT (USA Today) — His own words, told to police moments after he shot a 19-year-old woman on his Dearborn Heights porch, suggest Theodore Wafer may not have intended to fire his gun the night Renisha McBride was killed.
Prosecutors played his comments in Wayne County Circuit Court on Thursday during the second day of testimony in Wafer’s trial.
“I open up the door, kind of like, ‘Who is this?’ and the gun discharged,” Wafer told police. “I didn’t know there was a round in there.”
Meanwhile, the defense, which has said that 55-year-old Wafer shot McBride in self-defense, questioned Dearborn Heights police about how they investigated the young woman’s death, saying “it was incomplete and inadequate and evidence was lost.”
