Local News in Brief : Ackerman Denies He Proposed Marriage

Bradley Ackerman, taking the witness stand Thursday at his trial on charges of attempted murder, disputed the testimony of his former girlfriend, who said she had rejected his proposal of marriage shortly before he allegedly shot her in her Long Beach home.

“Absolutely not,” Ackerman, 24, said when asked whether Julie Alban, 23, had dashed his hopes of marriage. “We had talked about it, but I was nowhere near ready for marriage.”

Ackerman, the stepson of Long Beach Press Telegram Chairman Daniel H. Ridder, is accused of shooting Alban, the daughter of a prominent surgeon, as she slept June 8, paralyzing her below the waist. He then turned the gun on himself.

The defense says Ackerman, depressed by gambling debts of almost $50,000, decided to commit suicide and in the process unintentionally injured his girlfriend.

Ackerman testified in Los Angeles Superior Court that on the night of the shooting he took about 25 Valium tablets to kill himself. “Everything was getting foggy,” he said. “That’s the last thing I remember.”

During cross-examination by the prosecutor, however, Ackerman admitted that he could not say with certainty what his intentions were the moment he pulled the trigger because he could not remember the event.