Eldon Samuel at first denied he killed his brother, 13

At the start of his police interrogation, 14-year-old Eldon Gale Samuel III admitted shooting his father in the stomach the night of March 24, 2014, after an altercation in their Coeur d’Alene house. But then he blamed his father for attacking his 13-year-old brother Jonathan, who was hiding under his bed.

“I can still hear his screaming,” Samuel, referring to his autistic brother, told two Coeur d’Alene Police detectives. He told them his wounded father had crawled to Jonathan’s bedroom, shot the boy with a shotgun and attacked him with a machete.

On Wednesday, Samuel’s defense attorney told the jury it was Samuel who killed both his father and brother in the tiny emergency housing unit owned by St. Vincent de Paul North Idaho. Samuel is charged with first-degree murder in his brother’s death and second-degree murder in his father’s death. Now 16, he is being tried in 1st District Court as an adult.

The jury Thursday watched the first part of the police interview, which is over four hours long. The rest of the video will be shown in court Friday.

When a detective asked Samuel if he knew why he was at the police station in the interview room with them, the boy replied, “The murder thing.”

He explained he had shot his father because his father was ranting about zombies, had ordered Samuel to get out of the house, and then struck him in the chest area when he refused to leave. “He hit me again and I shot him,” Samuel told the detectives. He also told them he shot his father three more times in the left cheek and left temple that night.

One of the interviewers was Detective Jason Wilhelm, the school resource officer at Lakes Magnet Middle School where Samuel was in eight grade and had gotten into trouble for bring a pair of handcuffs to school. Wilhelm reminded Samuel they had spoken about that incident at school.

Earlier Thursday, jurors heard from police detectives who searched the crime scene and collected weapons, ammunition and spent cartridges from inside the emergency housing unit where the family had been living. The weapons included a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol with magazine, a .45-caliber handgun with magazine, a shotgun, a machete with serrated top edge, a hatchet and several knives. All were introduced into evidence.

Coeur d’Alene Police Detective Nick Lowry described a couple of ledgers investigators found in the bedroom where Samuel slept. One was labeled “Zombie Survival Handbook,” and inside someone wrote that it “contains all the information you need to survive a zombie outbreak.”

Other writings found in the room included a passage stating that the author believed “we should be allowed to keep our cell phones” at all times “for when the school is under attack.” A school writing assignment asked what items one would pack for an extended absence. The writer wrote that if a knock came on the door and he had only 20 minutes to pack and leave, he’d take “all of my guns” as well as food and ammunition to be prepared.

Samuel frequently was absent from school, according to court documents.

Mellisa Estrada, the outreach director for St. Vincent de Paul North Idaho, testified that she secured the “old and small” Daly House on North First Street for Eldon Samuel Jr. and his two sons to stay in for a 90-day stay. Estrada said that during their stay she never saw weapons in the house during occasional inspections of the property. If she had, the family would have been evicted for violating the rules, Estrada said. Tenants are given a 24-hour notice before an inspection.

The Daly House, which since has been torn down, sat between the agency’s men’s shelter to the north and the women’s and children’s shelter to the south.

Estrada said she was on site that evening to deal with a dispute between two women, and afterward she heard a loud noise around 7:30 p.m. “It sounded like a gunshot or a backfire from a car,” Estrada said.

She also testified that shelter managers had provided Samuel’s father with several cans of Scrubbing Bubbles cleaner at his request. Public Defender John Adams, in his opening statement Wednesday, said the elder Samuel had been huffing, or inhaling the cleaning product fumes, to get high.

Jurors watched a short police body camera video of the defendant, his hands cuffed behind his back, being photographed outside the house by Coeur d’Alene Police Office Cody Cohen before he was placed in a patrol car and taken to the police department for questioning. Another video showed Samuel squirming and struggling with the handcuffs, and cursing a few times, while waiting in the back of the car.

Jurors also watched a video of Samuel stripping off his clothes at the police station so detectives could collect them for evidence. The clothing had what appeared to be blood and bits of flesh on them, detectives testified.

Police then gave Samuel another pair of jeans and a T-shirt that had been brought from his home, and he changed into them before the interview. Samuel waived his Miranda rights and agreed to speak with detectives.