Posted on 03/30/2006 2:29:34 AM PST by MadIvan
A woman accused of murdering her husband of two months, said yesterday that she shot him accidentally as she danced provocatively for him with his shotgun to the music of Shania Twain.
Linda West, 49, was called upon to demonstrate in court how she had gyrated to the song Man! I Feel Like a Woman, using a broom handle to represent the gun.
She said she had decided to arouse her husband Gregory, 45, who was wearing only a dressing gown after getting out of the bath. It was a "sexual game" that had tragic consequences, she said.
Mr West was found dead in an armchair by police after his wife made a hysterical 999 call. He had a single shotgun wound to his chest.
Giving evidence in her defence at Winchester Crown Court, Hants, West said they had shared a "lovely evening" at their Southampton home. They had drunk wine and she had run a bath for her husband.
When he came out of the bathroom she decided to put on a show and began dancing to the music of the country singer, which was playing on a stereo. The song contains erotically-charged lyrics.
She said Mr West then disappeared into the bedroom of their flat and reappeared with his BSA500 shotgun and asked her to dance with it.
West re-enacted her moves using the broom handle, telling the jury: "I'm holding the barrels of the gun and I'm dancing holding the gun. I was entertaining my husband."
She said that at the end of the song she put the shotgun on to the floor beside her. With tears streaming down her face she said: "It just went off…it just went bang."
A weapons expert told the court that the safety catch, used to prevent the accidental firing of the gun, was faulty and it could have gone off without anyone touching the trigger. West told the court that she was unaware of the fault.
The prosecution claims the couple had argued after drinking and West had deliberately shot her husband, a marine engineer, in anger. Neighbours had reported hearing shouting coming from their flat.
West insisted that she had been cavorting to fulfil her husband's fantasy, when tragedy struck.
"It was a game, it was a game", she said. "It was just a sexual game."
Describing her hysterical reaction after the gun went off, West said: "I was trying to wake him up. I was slapping his face and trying to open his eyes, and he just wouldn't wake up."
Asked why she had not mentioned the sex game when interviewed by police, she said she had been confused.
The jury has heard that Mr West, a keen shooter, had been wearing only a blue dressing gown and no underwear at the time of his death.
In her 999 call West had said: "We were playing with a gun, it just went off. I don't believe it."
Armed police surrounded the flat before finally entering the property and arresting her.
Tests showed that West had consumed a quantity of alcohol that was more than twice the legal drink-driving limit.
She denies murdering her husband on May 9 last year. She also denies manslaughter.
The trial continues.
I was drunk
When my mama shot my daddy with his shotgun
As she danced provocatively to the music of Shania Twain...
I like your attitude:)
[If I were prosecutor, I would place a blank shell in the gun and bounce it off the floor a few times. If it wont go off , guilty.]
This would be clever but you wouldn't be allowed to do it. Everyone knows that it would be too dangerous because guns kill people, even when they don't load themselves with real amunition.
On a serious note, the wad in any shotgun shell can still be dangerous or at least damaging. And if your stunt, by some mysterious chance, backfired (pun intended), you would lose and probably end up as a defense attorney soon after for yourself.
Yes it is, and no, she wouldn't, with her speakling English and not American.
The CSI folks know exactly what is necessary to prove/disprove her story - the evidence is in the corpse.
This has to show up as the plot on Law and Order.
TYPO:
This has to show up as the plot on Flaw and Odor
It's fixed now
It was only about sex. Can't we just move on?
Or did it go off prematurely????
It would be really cool to have an episode where something like this happens, and the Detectives, DAs and everybody concludes she is lying, so they prosecute her. Then, in the end, the jury could aquit and save them from themselves.
After Jack McCoy has been right 638 times in a row, it would be refreshing to see him be wrong at least once.
Jack does lose once in a while.
Yeah, but even when he loses, he is right. When he loses it's the jury's fault.
It's all in the eyebrows.
Now we have the answer to shotgun weddings....
He got banged by Shania Twain ?!?!?! .....cool !
I just have to get over that little thing of still being in love with my late wife. I have to knock the most perfect woman I have ever known off the pedestal.
And they have an expensive dummy to use when figuring impact angle and range too.
I do like “CSI Las Vegas”, but I do wonder how they get DNA results in 15 minutes.
It's Shania's fault.
I'm just waiting for the next crime she'll commit. Giving nukes to Iran, perhaps?
Regards, Ivan
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