Jury Hears How Hunter Shot His Pal Defense Says Change Of Coat, Path Played Role In Fatality

Dennis Miner sat silently, his head slightly bowed as the tape recorder in the courtroom blared his 911 call to the Boundary County Sheriff’s Department.

“I shot my partner,” Miner told a dispatcher. “I put my jacket over him. He’s shot through the middle. Please hurry.”

Miner, 47, was on trial Monday, charged with involuntary manslaughter. He’s accused of shooting to death his hunting partner Cody Taylor, of Coeur d’Alene, last October.

Taylor, 38, and Miner were hunting elk in the Trail Creek area near Naples when Taylor was shot through the back with a hunting rifle. Taylor died at the scene.

Boundary County Prosecutor Randall Day told a nine-woman, three-man jury that Miner recklessly fired his rifle at a target he wasn’t sure of.

“Knowing the difference between a human being and an (antlered) elk at 50 yards is a standard anyone should be able to comply with,” Day said, noting Miner also had a scope mounted on his gun.

“The gun was shot with the intent to kill what was in the target … and Cody Taylor was in the target.”

Miner claimed he was shooting at the rump of an elk, but what he actually fired at was a brown coat Taylor was wearing, Day said.

One of Miner’s defense attorneys, Mark Jones, said the shooting was a tragic hunting accident, nothing more. When the two men went up Trail Creek, they split up.

Somewhere in the woods, Taylor strayed from the path he was supposed to take and took off his red coat, exchanging it for a brown one.

“Taylor ended up in a different spot, wearing a different coat,” Jones said. “Miner sees what he believes is the butt end of an elk and fires.”

After firing, Jones said Taylor thought he heard his partner yell, asking if he got something.

“He said, ‘Yes, I got one’ and finds out it’s his partner and he is devastated.”

Witnesses who testified Monday said Miner drove a couple of miles down Trail Creek to call for help at a nearby home.

“He was very upset. He kept saying, ‘My God, my God. I need to use the phone. I just killed my hunting partner,”’ said Beverly Bailey, a resident who let Miner use her phone.

Bailey offered Miner some blankets to take up to the shooting site, but he declined, saying he had put his coat over his friend.

“I know he’s dead. I shot him through the stomach,” Bailey recalled Miner telling her.

Miner waited at the house for medical personnel and sheriff’s deputies and led them to the wooded area. Taylor was dead when they arrived.

If convicted of involuntary manslaughter, Miner faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The trial is expected to last two more days.

“Nobody probably feels any worse about his than Dennis Miner,” Day told the jury. “But it is not your place to be swayed by sympathies.”

, DataTimes