Prom Night Slaying Was Accidental, Defense Says : Trial: Defendant stumbled in a dark Anaheim hotel room, accidentally firing gun into head of sleeping girl, attorney asserts.

Defense attorneys for Paul M. Crowder, a high school dropout charged in the prom night shooting death of a Crescenta Valley High School basketball star, told jurors Wednesday that Crowder’s gun accidentally discharged when he stumbled into a dark hotel room where the victim was sleeping.

Presenting the defense’s case for the first time before an Orange County Superior Court jury, defense attorney E. Bonnie Marshall said Crowder entered a darkened room at the Crown-Sterling Suites Hotel in Anaheim looking for a friend when he tripped. A .357-magnum handgun Crowder was holding fired, hitting 17-year-old Berlyn Cosman in the bed where she slept.

“The trajectory of the bullet (that killed Cosman) is consistent with a falling motion,” Marshall said. Marshall did not say why Crowder had the gun in his hand at the time, explaining later that that part of her case would ultimately “unfold.”

Marshall told the jury that testimony would show that Crowder and Cosman were “good friends” who “spent a great deal of time together” and had double-dated on occasion. She acknowledged that Crowder was annoyed on the night of the prom about a change of plans regarding where he would sleep but said that by the time Cosman was shot early the next morning he was no longer upset and had threatened no one.

Crowder, 19, is charged with murder in the June 1 death of Cosman, who had been scheduled to attend college on a basketball scholarship. Prosecutors, who rested their case Wednesday, have characterized Crowder as an insecure, threatening youth who repeatedly waved the .357 at students celebrating their prom and deliberately shot Cosman because she had insulted him.

In testimony Wednesday, prosecution and defense witnesses revealed more details of a long night of alcohol, drugs, guns and hurt feelings that culminated in Cosman’s death.

Half a dozen teen-agers, some of whom attended the party at the Anaheim hotel without their parents’ knowledge and few of whom attended the prom, gave varying accounts of Crowder’s conduct on the night and early morning of the shooting. In the process, they also described a social setting where young men routinely had possession of guns that did not belong to them, four of which were brought to the hotel that night.

Christine Madeiros, a 17-year-old student, testified that Crowder waved the gun around one of the three hotel rooms the teen-agers rented that night. She said Crowder and a friend later became “angry because no one would let them sleep in their rooms.”

Crowder, she said, then threatened to kill Cosman and another woman, Jill Cappillero, who was sharing the same hotel bedroom with Cosman. Under cross-examination, Madeiros said that she had two hits of marijuana that night and she acknowledged, as other young witnesses have, giving different accounts of the evening to investigators.

Bryan J. Girroir, Cappillero’s boyfriend who was asleep in the hotel room where Cosman was shot, said Cappillero had suggested that Crowder go to another room because she and Cosman wanted to sleep.

“I could tell he was upset,” Girroir said of Crowder, “that his feelings were hurt.”

Girroir testified that he followed Crowder down the hall to the room where a party was going on, where he tried to explain why Cappillero had asked him to leave, saying that the girls just wanted to sleep. He said he never heard Crowder issue any threats.

But under cross-examination by Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans, Girroir acknowledged that he had repeatedly given authorities misleading or incomplete answers to their questions.

“How many times have you lied in this case to cover your butt?” Evans asked him.

Girroir said he was drunk the night of the prom, having consumed a six-pack of beer, and had brought a Colt-.380 pistol to his room. After the shooting, he said another teen-ager gave him another pistol--the fourth firearm brought to the hotel that night--which he hid in his car after asking whether it had been used in the shooting.

Several days before the prom, Girroir said, he had gone shooting at a range with Crowder and two other teen-agers who attended the party.

Another student, Gena Phillips, 17, testified that Crowder returned to the room where the party was going on and was “angry” after Cosman and Cappillero asked him not to sleep in their room. She said she also heard the threatening language from Crowder regarding Cosman and Cappillero but acknowledged under cross-examination that she was “buzzed” on beer that night.

Testifying for the defense, Chris W. Conroy of La Crescenta acknowledged that he had threatened to shoot his ex-girlfriend if she went ahead with plans to attend the prom with someone else. Witnesses have said that Crowder had been asked to attend the party to protect Conroy’s ex-girlfriend and her date.

Conroy said he used a toy replica of a .38 handgun when he issued the threat against the ex-girlfriend at her job. He also acknowledged that he had been convicted of battery against another ex-girlfriend, as well as using a gun in a threatening manner.

Conroy, who described himself as a good friend of Crowder, said he gave the ex-girlfriend two black eyes before threatening her, but he did not show up at the prom or the party. The previous violent incidents, he said, took place while he was intoxicated and under the influence of drugs.