Defendant Testifies That Killing Of Ex-Girlfriend An Accident
One side portrayed him as a woman-beating killer.
The other side said he was a young man who merely made a terrible decision.
On Monday, a jury will have to decide which person Don Houser is.
The 22-year-old Plummer man is being tried in federal court in the second-degree murder of his ex-girlfriend, Angela LaSarte.
LaSarte, a 39-year-old mother of four, died June 11 after being shot in the neck at Bobbi’s bar in Plummer. She was the daughter of longtime Coeur d’Alene Tribal Chairman Bernard “Happy” LaSarte.
Houser began dating LaSarte in September 1993. It was a relationship fraught with anger and violence.
Witnesses testified that Houser beat LaSarte on several occasions. They told of seeing him drag the woman across a floor by her hair and of hearing Houser threaten to kill her.
But on Thursday, Houser took the stand to defend himself. He portrayed himself as the sympathetic boyfriend who had tried to help LaSarte with her drinking problem.
Houser said that when he tried to break up with LaSarte just weeks before the shooting, he had to get a restraining order to keep her away from him.
Houser also read a note that LaSarte left him after they broke up.
“There are a lot of people who are after you now and they will beat you … They said they’d been wanting a piece of you for a long time.”
On the night of June 10, Houser went to Bobbi’s bar.
Houser said he saw LaSarte there with a man named Nick Parker. Houser claims Parker called him over to the table and started an argument.
Houser eventually walked out into the parking lot where he got into another argument, with Chris Biles, over money owed to him. Houser said several people were yelling at him from the bar doorway.
Houser said he went to his truck and started it to leave but then decided to try to talk to Biles and get his money back.
“Do you have an explanation for this jury why you didn’t just drive your car home?” asked James Peters, the U.S. attorney prosecuting the case.
“No, I don’t,” Houser responded.
Houser said he grabbed a .22-caliber gun he had in the truck and walked out into the street.
“I figured if Nick Parker or anybody else came over I would scare them with it,” Houser said.
But it was LaSarte who walked over to him. Houser said she saw the gun and then started wrestling with him over it.
“I didn’t want to hurt Angie, I didn’t do that on purpose,” Houser said, as her family members sat in the courtroom, shaking their heads.
“I don’t know whose finger hit the trigger,” he insisted.
“Whose hand was the gun in?” Peters asked.
“Mine,” Houser admitted.
On Friday, the federal prosecutor and Houser’s federal defender made their final arguments to the jury.
Peters said that for Houser to get his gun in the middle of an argument was “like taking gasoline into a burning building. The defendant had a choice that night, he could have gone home.”
But Roger Peven, Houser’s defense attorney, said, “He made a very, very stupid choice … but that does not make you guilty of murder.”
Peters also pointed out that two eyewitnesses testified that LaSarte did not wrestle with Houser for the gun. Instead, they saw Houser grab the woman and shoot her through the neck before she could defend herself.
After the bullet was shot, the gun did not eject the empty casing as it should have. Peven argued that pressure must have been put on the slide part of the gun to prevent it from spitting out the casing. He believes that shows LaSarte grabbed the gun.
Peven also tried to discredit witness testimony Friday, pointing out several inconsistencies.
Among them, witnesses said LaSarte did not appear to be drunk, although tests later showed that she had consumed the equivalent of 10 drinks in an hour, Peven said.
The jury will begin its deliberation on Monday. Although Houser is charged with second-degree murder, jurors could find him guilty of the lesser crime of involuntary manslaughter.
, DataTimes