‘Ruined My Whole Life,’ Realtor Says of Slaying : Trial: Jury sees videotape in which Howard Barton, charged with murder, told police that he wishes the victim had driven away before argument escalated.

Pacific Beach realtor Howard Barton, charged with murder in the death of Marco Sanchez, told police he wished Sanchez had been able to start his car and drive away before the argument between them escalated to gunfire.

“I just want you to know this has ruined my whole life,” Barton said in a videotaped interview with homicide detectives about four hours after the Feb. 22, 1990, shooting.

The interview was shown to a Superior Court jury Monday during Barton’s murder trial.

Prosecutors said that Barton, 48, shot Sanchez, 24, after a minor traffic dispute involving Sanchez and Barton’s daughter, Andrea Barton, that began at Ingraham Street and Grand Avenue. Andrea Barton drove to her father’s realty office on Cass Street, and the two of them went looking for Sanchez.

Father and daughter found Sanchez, who lived in National City, inside the Cal Stores on Garnet Avenue. The three began arguing inside the store and the dispute continued on the sidewalk outside. Prosecution witnesses have testified that Sanchez twice attempted to walk away from Howard Barton.

Sanchez managed to get inside his car, which was parked on Garnet Avenue. Some witnesses have testified that Sanchez appeared to be fumbling with his keys moments before Barton took a pistol out of his pants pocket and fired one shot, hitting Sanchez in the back.

Barton told police he fired in self-defense when Sanchez swung at him with a knife. Although a folded knife, scissors and screwdrivers were found under and near the driver’s seat, several prosecution witnesses have testified that Sanchez was unarmed during the confrontation with Barton.

In the videotape played for the jury Monday, San Diego homicide Detective Renee Hill repeatedly asked Barton if he really saw a knife in Sanchez’s left hand.

“I must have,” Barton said.

Hill also asked Barton, who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon at the time, if he armed himself before he and Andrea Barton went looking for Sanchez. Barton said he usually carried the handgun in his pants pocket when he took rent receipts to the bank and was planning to make a deposit later that morning.

“Are you sure you didn’t take the gun with you. . . . Did you take this gun just in case this guy (Sanchez) was a nut, rather than going to the bank?” Hill asked.

“No,” Barton replied.

He told police that he normally kept the gun unloaded. However, investigators recovered an unexpended bullet at the scene. Hill said on the tape that the unspent round was probably ejected when Barton put another in the chamber.

Hill pointed out that Barton only had about $200 in his wallet and asked if he normally made small rent deposits. Barton said he had about $1,000 in additional receipts in his office safe that he had planned to deposit, along with the $200 in his wallet.

The detective kept going back to the shooting and repeatedly asked Barton about firing the handgun and about the knife Barton said he saw in Sanchez’s hand. On the tape, Barton demonstrated to police how Sanchez, who was sitting behind the wheel, slashed at him with the knife in his left hand.

Barton, who appeared confident during the interview, said he did not fire when Sanchez slashed at him. Instead, Barton told police, he fired after Sanchez made a sudden movement, while his hands were out of sight.

“When did he cause a threat to you?” Hill asked.

“When he made that move,” said Barton, who also admitted that he did not see what Sanchez had in his hands when he fired the fatal shot. “I just knew he had a knife,” he added.

Before firing the pistol, Barton said, he ordered Sanchez out of the car.

“I said, ‘Get out of the car and put the knife down.’ He looked at me like no way. . . . I thought he was lunging at me again, and I pulled the trigger,” Barton said.

“I wish to God he had just driven away. Basically, I was trying to solve a problem,” he said about the altercation between Sanchez and his daughter. “I had no intention of shooting him.”

Sanchez “gasped and then looked over at me” when he was shot, Barton said.

The mortally wounded Sanchez exited the parked car through the front passenger door, staggered a few feet and fell in the doorway of a dry cleaner’s. Police recovered a set of keys and a baseball cap near his body.

“I wasn’t mad at him,” Barton said. “I didn’t go down (there) to fight with him. I said I would like to (fight him), but I can’t.”