AUGUSTA — A defense attorney pressed the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office sergeant on the color of the T-shirt worn by the man firing a gun at him.
Sgt. Jacob Pierce, who fatally shot Roger Bubar, 65, and wounded his son Scott in a standoff 15 months ago in Belgrade, testified Thursday that he saw a man in a green shirt with short cropped hair when the muzzle flashed at him.
Scott Bubar, 41, of Brunswick, was in the second day of his trial at the Capital Judicial Center on a charge of attempting to murder Pierce as well as a charge of reckless conduct with a firearm. Scott Bubar’s blood was found on a green T-shirt recovered from that scene, and Bubar still sports a crew-cut style haircut.
Pierce testified that when he knocked on the front door of the trailer at 1003 Oakland Road, he heard male voices, and one of them said, “I will f…ing shoot you. I have a shotgun.”
Pierce read his statement aloud from a transcript of an interview he had with an investigator from the Office of the Maine Attorney General early on the morning after the shooting.
Pierce said he and a second deputy retreated across the road after hearing a shotgun being “racked,” or loaded.
Pierce also testified that afterward, an older man with long hair, wearing a red shirt and carrying a shotgun or a long rifle, came out on the trailer’s front porch and threatened him.
“I was yelling at him to come out with his hands up, drop the weapon,” Pierce said.
In response, he got vulgarities: “I will f…ing kill you. Get off my property.”
Pierce told Assistant District Attorney Alisa Ross that the firearm wasn’t pointed at him.
“He was just standing there, yelling at me,” Pierce said.
The defense maintains that Roger Bubar did all the shooting that night, not his son. In an opening statement, defense attorney Lisa Whittier says none of Scott Bubar’s DNA was found on the pistol or the shotgun recovered from the trailer.
Roger Bubar’s neighbors testified Monday about hearing bursts of gunfire the night of May 19, 2017, around the Oakland Road home.
Several of them called 911 that night to report a domestic disturbance about 9:30 a.m. involving a father and son and hearing squealing tires, yelling voices and a shot fired.
Pierce, one of several officers who went to the scene, testified to hearing two muffled shots, apparently from inside the trailer, after he and another officer took cover across the street.
He returned fire, he said, after the hearing the sound of breaking glass followed by a third, louder shot that appeared to be aimed at his location.
“I saw a muzzle flash,” he said. “It was orange-red circular color — probably combustion from the gunpowder as the round exited from whatever weapon was used.”
Pierce said when he initially tried to fire, he realized the safety was on and had to turn it off.
“I fired what I believed to be three to five rounds pointed exactly where the muzzle flash was,” he testified, saying he saw in that flash “an adult white male wearing green T-shirt with a high and tight crew cut — very short hair.”
That was followed by second exchange of gunfire.
“I heard more glass breaking, another muzzle shot, saw a gun flash and projectiles going over my head,” Pierce said.
He said he checked to make sure no officers were hurt, and that he could hear groaning from inside the trailer.
The Augusta emergency dispatch center radioed to say a woman had called to say she was bedridden in the trailer of the living room.
“My heart sank,” Pierce said. “I didn’t know if I had hit her or if she was harmed in any way.”
The Maine attorney general’s office, which investigates all uses of deadly force by law enforcement officers, issued a report to Kennebec County Sheriff Ken Mason in June 2018 clearing Pierce in the use of deadly force.
The report says that after in the second muzzle flash, “Sgt. Pierce saw a person in a green shirt in the window.” A footnote says, “Later investigation determined that the only person in the residence wearing a green shirt was Scott Bubar.”
The last witness on Thursday, Maine State Trooper David Powser, a member of the crisis negotiation team, testified about a one-hour-and-50-minute recorded phone call he had that night with the woman, Jenny Shorey.
About 20 minutes of the audio was played in the court. On it, Shorey repeatedly yells “Roger” and asks the trooper numerous times to identify himself.
Powser tries to get her to tell Scott Bubar to come out the door with nothing in his hands because an ambulance was waiting for him.
Shorey hollers, “Scott, they need you to go out the door.”
But she says Scott Bubar is bleeding and refuses. Finally the phone disconnects.
Bubar, who is being held at the Kennebec County jail, wearing a suit jacket and tie in court along with shackles, took some notes as his attorneys questioned the various witnesses.
Dr. Mark Flomenbaum, the state’s chief medical examiner, testified Thursday afternoon about the autopsy he performed on Roger Bubar’s body on May 21, 2017.
He identified photos showing three areas where the 5-foot, 110-pound Bubar was shot, as well as the bloodied red T-shirt that two of the bullets had pierced.
Bubar was shot just below the knee, in the abdomen and in the upper arm. The bullet in the arm traveled up and into the neck, hitting the spinal cord, Flomenbaum said.
One photo showed Roger Bubar’s body lying on the carpeted hallway of the trailer atop what appeared to be the long barrel of a gun. The body mostly was covered by a pink blanket.
Flomenbaum said a toxicology report shows Bubar’s blood alcohol content at 0.163, or double the legal limit for drivers age 21 and over in Maine. It also contained clonazepam (used to treat seizure and panic disorders), cocaine, morphine, ritalin or byproducts, and THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.
He said that combination “indicates significant impairment of perhaps judgment and volitional activity.”
“There’s a lot of stuff there,” Flomenbaum added.
The jury-waived trial in front of Justice Michaela Murphy is scheduled to resume at 8:30 a.m. Friday and is expected to run through next week.
Betty Adams — 621-5631
Twitter: @betadams
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