Youthful witness nervous, conflicted

Ten-year-old Winona Atkinson walked into Judge Robert Austin’s courtroom, looked at her father at the defendant’s table, and burst into tears.

“This may not be possible,” Assistant Public Defender John Whaley whispered to the girl’s father, 33-year-old Richard Atkinson, who is accused of murdering the woman his daughter called Mom.

When Austin managed to swear in the sobbing child, Whaley reminded her that she hadn’t cried in a meeting earlier Wednesday morning that turned her into Whaley’s witness instead of Deputy Prosecutor Jack Driscoll’s. Driscoll subpoenaed her, but hadn’t had a chance to interview her until shortly before she was sworn in.

The young witness, who turns 11 next month, collected herself and answered some questions with poise, but cried into a small mountain of tissues before she was done. The girl appeared nervous and conflicted about much of her testimony, and she answered many questions hesitantly.

She formed a wedge with her fingers and drove it into her forehead before answering questions. She plucked at the long pink ribbons on her black dress. She trembled. At one point, she looked at her father and lifted her hands, palms up, in a gesture of helplessness.

Her testimony contradicted much of what police reported she told them immediately after her father allegedly chased down and ran over his wife, 29-year-old Andrea Atkinson, on April 12 last year.

Winona Atkinson said Andrea Atkinson had been her stepmother most of her life, and she considered Andrea Atkinson her mother. But, when her parents separated in February 2004, Winona went with her father. The couple’s three younger children – now 4, 6 and almost 9 years old – remained with their mother.

The younger children also witnessed their mother’s death, but they were deemed too young to testify.

Later Wednesday, Spokane police Officer Marie Longshore testified that, on the evening that Andrea Atkinson was killed, Winona gave a detailed account of events leading up to her father running over her mother after a vehicle-bashing car chase.

Longshore testified that the girl said her father had been stalking his wife for days, suspecting she had a boyfriend. Longshore said the girl also told her that Richard Atkinson had asked whether she could forgive him if he killed Andrea Atkinson, and that she saw him deliberately run over his wife when the two-van chase ended in a crash and Andrea Atkinson fled her minivan.

But Winona Atkinson denied or minimized most of what Longshore attributed to her.

She stroked a small stuffed animal and asked, “Can you explain that?” when Whaley asked whether – with her as a passenger in his van later that day – Richard Atkinson circled the block near NorthTown mall, where Andrea Atkinson was visiting her friend Sandra Abel, in hopes of following his wife.

Bypassing that question, she said her father made a U-turn to follow Andrea Atkinson when he spotted her near Abel’s apartment. But it was her stepmother who twice crashed into her father’s van, not the other way around when her father caught up, she said, contradicting several other eyewitnesses.

Longshore said Winona told her that, after Andrea Atkinson crashed into Viktor Lavrov’s front yard at 304 E. Princeton Ave., Richard Atkinson returned to the scene. Longshore said the girl told her Atkinson deliberately crashed through a fence to run over his wife twice when she fled her van and pushed her three children to safety.

But Winona Atkinson on Wednesday denied making those statements. She also denied saying she heard her mortally wounded stepmother say, “He’s trying to kill me.”

“I love you, Dad,” the sobbing girl said as she passed the defendant on her way out of the courtroom.

“I love you, too, baby,” he responded.

“I love you much,” she answered as she was ushered out.

Speaking through a Russian interpreter, Lavrov testified that he looked into his front yard and saw Andrea Atkinson running from her disabled van. Then, he said, a second van driven by Richard Atkinson did a U-turn and speeded up to crash through his chain link fence and run over Andrea Atkinson.

She was dragged under his van for about three meters, Lavrov said. Then, he testified, Atkinson got out and shook her with two hands.

“It seemed like he wanted to make sure she was alive or dead,” Lavrov said.

The defendant is expected to take the stand today. His defense is that he was suffering from diminished mental capacity because of post-traumatic stress disorder in combination with drug and alcohol use when he ran over his wife. The trial is expected to conclude early next week.