Ronald Brady stands next to a diagram of his house and its driveway.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Ronald Brady spoke to a detective soon after he fired as many as six shots – one fatal – at a pair of suspected burglars outside his Onalaska house.
Lewis County Sheriff’s Office detective Bruce Kimsey: “What, why did you feel you had to shoot at these people?”
Brady: “I have no idea … I’d already shot at their front tires, and they were still pointing their flashlights at me.”
Brady, 60, is on trial for first-degree murder in the death of Thomas McKenzie of Morton and first-degree assault regarding McKenzie’s wife, Joanna McKenzie, on the night of April 19, 2010.
The retired bachelor called 911 himself, telling deputies he stayed overnight at his under-construction house on the 2100 block of state Route 508, because he thought someone had broken into the garage earlier and had arranged items for later retrieval, according to evidence heard in the trial this week in Lewis County Superior Court.
Deputies found fifty-six year-old Thomas McKenzie dead on the ground outside the house.
The father of nine died of a gunshot that passed through his chest, and through the pulmonary artery that goes to the lung, pathologist, Dr. Gina Fino told the jury yesterday.
Detectives recovered a Remington .22 caliber rifle and four spent casings, according to witness testimony.
Brady hasn’t testified; his words were heard in a taped statement played yesterday for the jury of six men and six women.
In the statement, Brady tells Kimsey it was about 9 p.m. when he got up to stretch his legs; he saw a light shining underneath the garage door, from a vehicle that arrived. The lights went out, he said.
“I decided, I got my .22 with me, so I would just wait and see what happened here,” Brady told Kimsey.
He said he heard a loud knocking on the door, but nobody called out to him to say anything.
“I thought, oh, I’m gonna open the garage door and shoot out the tires,” Brady said.
Brady described he was positioned “pretty much” in the garage, shooting from the hip and crouching.
He thought he fired two or three times at the truck’s tires and may have put one or two rounds through the windshield of the truck that was in his driveway, he said.
One person (later determined to be Thomas McKenzie with a flashlight) was to his left near the garage and the other at the back end of the truck, he said.
Kimsey: “The man is moving in the direction of where the woman is?”
“Brady: “Yeah”
Brady: “I think I shot a total of three in his direction”
Brady: “I might have shot once again at the windshield of the pickup. I might have shot at the cab of the pickup, or I might have shot at the tires.”
Brady told Kimsey he wasn’t taking any chances, they might be high on meth.
Kimsey: “Did you say anything to them this entire time?”
Brady: “No”
He put the rifle down and called 911.
The trial resumes this morning.
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Read about the opening day of the trial here
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
and by the way joanna toms wife is a poor excuse for a mother and wife!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!