'It was an accident'

A Naches man charged with murdering his girlfriend and mother of their two children insisted the shooting was not intentional when he spoke in court for the first time Wednesday.

"It was an accident," said 26-year-old Michael R. Spencer during often tearful testimony before a Yakima County Superior Court jury.

He said he had been sitting in the living room with Rebecca Tatum.

"I got up to get my gun out of the closet because I was going to fire it the next day," he said, breaking into tears. Spencer said he'd purchased the 9mm semi-automatic pistol several weeks earlier so that he could practice shooting in his backyard pasture.

He said as he examined the pistol, he pulled back the hammer and the gun fired, striking Tatum as she sat in a chair watching television.

"I don't know, it just went off," he said, adding he thought the gun was unloaded because the magazine wasn't in the pistol.

Then, he said, he tried to drag Tatum to his truck to drive to the hospital, but when he got to the porch, he gave up and ran to tell the neighbors to call 9-1-1.

Then he returned to her and waited, he said.

"I just laid there with her," he said. "I didn't know what to do."

Tatum was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center that same night. Tatum, who was 23 and five weeks pregnant, died from multiple wounds to her leg and torso.

Spencer's attorney insists the seven wounds were caused by a single ricocheting bullet. But state attorneys claim she was shot at least twice in a premeditated shooting that warrants the first-degree murder charge.

In cross-examining Spencer, assistant attorney general Melanie Tratnik noted that he contradicted himself when he testified that he was pulling the pistol's hammer when it fired. During an interview with detectives two years ago, Spencer said he pulled the trigger.

"Rebecca hated that gun, didn't she?" Tratnik asked Spencer. "In fact, it was her normal practice to never be in the same room as that gun ... but now she was in the room with that gun, and you pulled the trigger."

But Spencer insists the shooting was an accident.

"We had our ups and downs like everybody else," he said. "But I thought (our relationship) was good."

Witnesses who testified for the prosecutor alleged that Tatum was going to leave Spencer that night because of relationship problems and that he shot her to keep her from leaving.

Spencer was initially charged with second-degree murder. But the case was handed over to the state Attorney General's office after a potential conflict of interest arose when a civil deputy in the county prosecutor's office was named a possible witness. State attorneys upgraded the charge to first-degree murder earlier this year.

Dr. Daniel Selove, a self-employed forensic pathologist who testified on Tuesday, said his autopsy led him to conclude that one gunshot caused two wounds in the leg and four wounds in the abdomen, and a second gunshot entered her chest.

But on Wednesday, Kay Sweeney, a forensic scientist testifying for the defense, said his 50-hour investigation led him to conclude that all of the wounds were caused by a single bullet.

He said fiber and microscopic analyses led him to determine the path of the bullet. Also, he said clothing from her body offered no evidence of a second shot.

However, state attorneys attacked Sweeney's credibility. Tratnik said Sweeney was demoted while working for the Washington State Patrol lab, received three reprimands and two negative evaluations.

He left the state lab in 1995.

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