Boy Expected To Testify That His Father Shot At Him

Clay Tucker looked into his father’s eyes.

Then the 14-year-old boy watched as his father got out of a truck, pulled out a gun and shot at him, said Lansing Haynes, Kootenai County deputy prosecutor.

“He saw red flashes,” Haynes said Monday during the first day of Christopher Tucker’s attempted murder trial.

Christopher Tucker, 48, of Coeur d’Alene, is charged with two counts of attempted second-degree murder for allegedly trying to shoot his son and his ex-wife’s friend on July 4, 1995. He also is charged with possession of methamphetamine.

Clay Tucker, now 15, is expected to testify against his father today.

Dianna M. Isbell, who allegedly was with Tucker when the shooting occurred, is charged with two counts of accessory to attempted murder and drug possession.

Isbell denied the charges against her and Tucker in an earlier interview.

“Chris Tucker was never there that night,” Isbell said. “He wouldn’t hurt his kid, he loves his son.”

The incident is the culmination of an ugly divorce between Christopher Tucker and his former wife Marie, Haynes said.

In the early morning of July 4, Stacey Dreher, 34, borrowed her friend Marie’s car. Dreher and Clay Tucker then drove to Dreher’s home.

Dreher testified Monday that Christopher Tucker had been threatening her and vandalizing her home so she wanted to go home to put her new car inside the garage.

While there, Dreher and the boy noticed a truck that kept driving past. They followed it in Dreher’s car to get the license plate number.

But the truck driver stopped suddenly, Dreher testified.

Dianna Isbell jumped out of the driver’s side and began yelling at them as Dreher tried to drive past, Dreher testified.

Although Dreher did not see who fired the shots, Clay Tucker is expected to testify that he saw his father step out of the truck’s passenger side and level a gun at them.

The two heard eight or nine shots that sounded like they came from different guns, Dreher testified.

“I started screaming at him, ‘Get down, they’re shooting at us,”’ Dreher said.

Sheriff’s deputies later found spent bullet casings at the shooting scene from a .380-caliber handgun and an assault rifle, Haynes said.

During a previous interview, Isbell said that it was several other men who shot at Clay Tucker and Dreher. Clay Tucker said it was his father only because he was angry as a result of the divorce, Isbell said.

“We’re not the ones that are guilty,” she said.

Prior to the shooting charge, Christopher Tucker had been arrested numerous times for domestic battery and violating his wife’s protection order, according to court records.

, DataTimes