Man Who Shot At Son Convicted

Last year, 14-year-old Clay Tucker watched his father pull out a gun and shoot at him.

On Thursday, the high school freshman watched a bailiff haul his dad away in handcuffs - a convicted man.

Christopher Tucker, 48, of Coeur d’Alene, was convicted Thursday on two counts of aggravated assault for shooting at his son and his ex-wife’s friend in July 1995.

“I’m happy about it,” Clay Tucker, now 15, said after the conviction. But “I wanted a higher charge.”

Christopher Tucker was originally charged with two counts of attempted second-degree murder. The jurors instead opted for the lesser offense of aggravated assault. They also found Tucker guilty of possession of methamphetamine.

Christopher Tucker and his ex-wife Marie Valente had two sons together, Clay and 13-year-old Cody. The two were in the middle of a divorce at the time of the shooting and Tucker had been harassing and threatening the family for months, Valente said.

But Clay Tucker and his mother also say methamphetamine was to blame for the shooting.

“He was doing a lot of drugs,” Clay Tucker said.

“People don’t think when they’re on that stuff,” Valente said.

On the morning of July 4, Stacey Dreher, Valente’s friend, borrowed Valente’s car and took Clay for a drive to her home.

While at Dreher’s home, the two noticed a truck was repeatedly driving past them. They followed the truck to get its license plate number.

But the truck stopped in the street. Clay Tucker testified that he saw his father get out of the truck and point a gun at them.

“I didn’t think he was going to shoot at me,” Clay said Thursday. Tucker fired several shots. One bullet lodged in the car only six inches from the teen, Valente said.

But during the trial, Tucker’s defense attorney Ken Brooks tried to show that the night darkness and truck headlights would have prevented the boy from seeing who shot at him.

“Clay did not see his father,” Brooks said during closing arguments Thursday. “Clay Tucker thought he saw his father.”

Tucker’s girlfriend, Dianna Isbell, also testified that she was in the truck when the shots were fired. But she insisted it was a group of unnamed men - referring to them as “the boys” - who pulled the trigger.

Isbell is charged with accessory to attempted murder and drug possession.

Several of Tucker’s friends also testified that he had been at a Coeur d’Alene home during the shooting.

But deputy prosecutor Lansing Haynes pointed out several inconsistencies in their testimony and Isbell’s story. Haynes also forced Isbell to admit on the stand that she had lied numerous times to detectives.

“His alibi is as porous as a sieve,” Haynes said.

Dreher said the incident has forced her to move out of town. “I fear him (Chris Tucker) the most but also his friends - he had a way of making them follow him,” she said.

Clay Tucker, a freshman at Lake City High School, downplayed the incident’s affect on his life Thursday.

“I just try not to think about it,” he said.

But Valente said both of her sons have been wounded by the shooting.

“He withdrew really bad afterward - he just closed off” Valente said of Clay. “These kids have been through total hell. What it’s done to them, I guess I’ll get to find out as time goes on.”

, DataTimes