{"id":5265,"date":"2011-03-04T10:08:23","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T18:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lewiscountysirens.com\/?p=5265"},"modified":"2011-03-04T10:16:15","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T18:16:15","slug":"no-winners-chehalis-man-not-guilty-of-fatally-shooting-girlfriend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lewiscountysirens.com\/?p=5265","title":{"rendered":"No winners: Chehalis man not guilty of fatally shooting girlfriend"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sharyn\u00a0 L. Decker
\nLewis County Sirens news reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n

CHEHALIS – The acquittal yesterday of a 31-year-old National Guardsman charged in the gunshot death of his girlfriend was not necessarily a reason to celebrate, according to his attorney.<\/p>\n

Jesse Karr was found not guilty yesterday of fatally shooting 28-year-old Sara M. Whitson in Sept. 2009 in the Chehalis apartment they shared. He said the handgun accidentally discharged as he was unloading it.<\/p>\n

\"2011.0228.karr.small_2\"<\/a>

Jesse Karr<\/p><\/div>\n

“There’s no winner in this case,” defense attorney Don McConnell said after the verdict.<\/p>\n

“This poor guy’s gone through a lot of emotional trauma, this was the love of his life,” McConnell said.<\/p>\n

Karr, 29, had just returned from Iraq about a month earlier and moved in with the woman he’d dated off and on for about four years, according to witness testimony.<\/p>\n

He had offered to clean her .22 caliber handgun, and the weapon – which operated in the exact opposite way of his, according to his attorney – went off in his hand, shooting him in his finger and Whitson in the abdomen. She died during emergency surgery.<\/p>\n

In the trial that began in Lewis County Superior Court on Monday, Deputy Prosecutor Colin Hayes told jurors it was a reckless act, by a man who’d never even seen the gun before.<\/p>\n

“He wasn’t quite sure how to get the magazine out, he didn’t ask how to get it out, he didn’t ask about the safety,” Hayes told jurors during the three-day trial.<\/p>\n

Karr was charged with first-degree manslaughter in February 2010.<\/p>\n

A jury of eight women and four men deliberated a little more than seven hours over two days, and returned their verdict just before lunch yesterday. Not guilty of first-degree manslaughter and not guilty of second-degree manslaughter.<\/p>\n

McConnell said that’s the outcome he expected, for an accident.<\/p>\n

“It’s the way it happened, it’s the way it was,” he said. “It’s the way he told everyone from day one.”<\/p>\n

The Centralia attorney said the shooting was a tragedy for everyone, for family, for friends, for his client.<\/p>\n

“He’s got to live with this for the rest of his life,” McConnell said.<\/p>\n

Hayes was disappointed, but said it was the jury’s decision.<\/p>\n

“The jury heard the evidence and weighed it and decided he did not commit a crime,” Hayes said yesterday.<\/p>\n

“We never contended it was not an accident,” he said. “Just reckless, or at least negligent.”<\/p>\n

It’s the second time already this year McConnell has gotten an acquittal for a client in Lewis County Superior Court.<\/p>\n

Two weeks ago, a jury found Jaime Roberto Hernandez not guilty of second-degree assault in what prosecutors described as an attack on a DeGoede Bulb Farm worker with a garden hoe by his supervisor. The first trial, held the first week in January, ended with a hung jury.<\/p>\n

Newly-elected Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer – McConnell’s former law partner – has “walled off” cases such as Karr’s and Hernandez’s, those which previously involved their firm.<\/p>\n

Meyer has arranged for supervision on those cases to be handled by his Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sharyn\u00a0 L. Decker Lewis County Sirens news reporter CHEHALIS – The acquittal yesterday of a 31-year-old National Guardsman charged in the gunshot death of his girlfriend was not necessarily a reason to celebrate, according to his attorney. Jesse Karr was found not guilty yesterday of fatally shooting 28-year-old Sara M. Whitson in Sept. 2009 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10],"class_list":["post-5265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-top-story","tag-by-sharyn-l-decker","tag-news-reporter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lewiscountysirens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lewiscountysirens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lewiscountysirens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lewiscountysirens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lewiscountysirens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5265"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lewiscountysirens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5269,"href":"https:\/\/lewiscountysirens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5265\/revisions\/5269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lewiscountysirens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lewiscountysirens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lewiscountysirens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}