Defendant Says He Was Not at Shooting Scene

Eric Hazelgrove was relaxed and chatty Thursday when he took the stand in his own defense against charges that he attempted to murder a 56-year-old man who ran a lunch wagon at an Interstate 5 rest stop north of Oceanside.

At times, he seemed to be chatting with friends instead of giving sworn testimony in answer to questions from his court-appointed attorney, Barbara McDonald, and Deputy Dist. Atty. Greg Walden.

Hazelgrove, 30, laughed and rapped about cars, motorcycles, guns and friends in disjointed sentences that traveled far from the question he had been asked.

Several times he lapsed into Spanish and once into German until Vista Superior Court Judge Irma Gonzalez admonished him to speak only in English so that the court reporter could transcribe his testimony.

His smile vanished and his eyes narrowed to slits when either attorney touched on the events of Aug. 8, when Lee Harrell was shot five times with a handgun by a man identified by four witnesses as Hazelgrove.

“I’ve never been anywhere near that rest stop,” Hazelgrove said. “All I know is I didn’t do it.”

When pressed by Walden as to why his girlfriend and others testified that he had been with them and had fired shots at Harrell that August morning, Hazelgrove ducked his head and rubbed his crew cut and said: “I guess it was mistaken identity. . . . Or it might have been a setup.”

He launched into a tale about China Lake, the Naval Weapons Center, his former girlfriend Kerry Wagner, Wagner’s father, and a plot against him. About Kerry Wagner, he admitted, “she may or may not be part of this whole thing.”

At another point, he exploded in anger when Walden suggested that he might not want to remember the shooting.

“For anybody to say I’m just going to go out and blast somebody, it’s crazy,” Hazelgrove said. “I’m rational. I’m totally rational.”

Hazelgrove also testified that he had never seen the handgun, a .22-caliber Smith & Wesson, that had been used to shoot Harrell and was found on the seat of Hazelgrove’s truck when pursuing police, sheriff’s deputies and Highway Patrol officers caught up with him.

When asked by Walden later about the gun, he admitted that a gun was on the seat of his truck. When asked who put it there, he replied: “I can’t say concisely and decisively for myself, no sir.” He later speculated that “somebody secreted the weapon in my truck.”

Tami Hood, who identified herself as Hazelgrove’s common-law wife and mother of his two children, testified Thursday that Hazelgrove “had always been a little bit different,” but with drugs he had been taking to control his moods, “he seems to be a little calmer.”

In his good periods, Hood testified, “he is a good parent and is very concerned about his children’s education and health, but when he’s strange, I don’t like the kids to see him that way.”