As Jury Deliberates, Man Pleads Guilty To Manslaughter

Richard Ballinger Jr. didn’t give his jury enough time to reach a verdict Thursday.

The 19-year-old defendant interrupted deliberations about 10:30 a.m. and pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the death of a 14-year-old Colville boy he shot in the face and allowed to bleed to death.

The jury went home after listening to three days of testimony.

Ballinger was sentenced to 20 months in jail. Prosecutors agreed not to charge him with possession of a firearm.

“It gave our family some closure,” said Linda Allen, the victim’s mother. “It was time.”

While she believes her son was killed deliberately by Ballinger, he insists the shooting was accidental.

He said he thought his .30-30 lever-action rifle was unloaded when he showed it to his friend Mark Allen, who was in Ballinger’s bedroom. Another youth, Charles Moreau, said he had his back turned when the rifle discharged.

Moreau said he refused Ballinger’s request to say he witnessed the Oct. 20, 1994, shooting. Ballinger feared police wouldn’t believe the shooting was accidental, Moreau said.

Testimony indicated Ballinger panicked and called his mother in Ohio before summoning help for Allen. Although an ambulance arrived within five minutes after being dispatched, the victim had already bled to death.

An autopsy suggested Allen might have survived if Ballinger or Moreau had called authorities promptly. Spokane pathologist Dr. George Lindholm reported that Allen lived 10 to 15 minutes after being shot.

Sue Winteroud, the emergency dispatcher who took Ballinger’s call, said he sounded upset and panicky and was breathing heavily.

“I just had an accident,” Ballinger said in a tape recording. “I just shot somebody … When I was picking up my gun to show somebody, it went off.”

Ambulance attendant Richard Kuh said Ballinger was sitting in a chair and nervously smoking a cigarette when he arrived. Kuh said he found Allen slumped on Ballinger’s bed and already dead. A pool of blood was starting to congeal, he testified.

Moreau said the boys had gone to Ballinger’s room to smoke marijuana. Ballinger’s father, a long-haul trucker, was away at the time. Moreau said he and Ballinger hid the marijuana and did not report it to police at the time.

Linda Allen said her son was cooperating with police in a theft that involved Ballinger and that made him a target for revenge.

“I think that maybe Richard was trying to scare my son and saying, ‘You’re getting me in trouble,’ ” she said.

Several weeks after the shooting, Ballinger and Moreau were arrested for burglarizing a downtown pawn shop. Moreau pleaded guilty in February and was sentenced to 30 days in jail and 240 hours of community service.

Ballinger also pleaded guilty to the burglary Thursday, along with the manslaughter charge. Prosecutors agreed not to charge him with being in possession of a firearm in that case as well.

Although Ballinger had just turned 18 when he shot Allen, both of them were ninth-graders.

Ballinger’s attorney, Carl Oreskovich, said the teenager is dyslexic and failed the ninth grade twice in Ohio. Ballinger came to live with his father in Colville in hopes a different environment would help him pass the ninth grade, Oreskovich said.

, DataTimes