Defendant Calls Slaying of Girlfriend Accident

Hanging his head and fighting tears, Brian Framstead on Wednesday recounted the last minutes of his girlfriend’s life as she crouched on a stranger’s doorstep, cowering before the shotgun in his hand.

“I heard a noise,” Framstead testified in almost a whisper. “I turned real fast to see if someone was coming out from the door. . . . When I turned, the gun went off.”

Earlier, defense attorney Christian Jensen asked Framstead, 30, to show jurors how he held the sawed-off shotgun when he shot Tammy Davis, 19, but Framstead balked.

“I can’t,” he said, his voice cracking. And then, dropping his head: “I, I don’t want to.”

Testifying for the second day in Orange County Superior Court, Framstead insisted that he never intended to harm Davis when he jumped into her car with a loaded gun as she left work in Huntington Beach on Jan. 5, 1990, two days after breaking off their relationship.

He said he wanted to explain how she had broken his heart by jilting him, and then commit suicide in front of her to “make her feel responsible.” Framstead drove into the desert after the shooting and set himself on fire.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans, determined to show that Framstead was an obsessive lover who deliberately gunned down the mother of his child, sought during an often sarcastic cross-examination to unravel the defendant’s claims of accidental shooting and suicidal intent.

It is a case in which the facts are not in dispute, only their interpretation. Each side points to the same events to draw opposite conclusions. To Framstead carrying a gun, the defense replies that he planned to kill himself. Prosecutors say it shows Davis was his target.

Framstead, a cabinetmaker from Inglewood, admitted Wednesday that his self-destructive feelings came and went in the weeks before the killing, but he held to his contention that he was suicidal that night.

Evans challenged that, noting that Framstead said he threw the shotgun into a planter as he fled after shooting Davis because the gun looked suspicious.

“Why would a person who’s about to kill himself care about being seen running around with a gun?” Evans asked.

Framstead admitted that he had repeatedly spied on Davis, and that he harassed a man she was dating, but he denied being “obsessed” with her.

He also admitted that she had made him very angry many times, including two occasions when she went out with another man.

Referring to the night of the killing, after Davis had ended their relationship, leaving him only two-hour weekly visits with their baby daughter, Evans asked him: “Have you ever been that angry in your whole life?”

“I don’t think so,” Framstead answered. But he quickly added that the anger had faded into hurt by the time he confronted Davis.

Evans implied that it appeared Framstead planned to kill “more than one person” that night, noting that he brought a loaded shotgun, a pair of handcuffs, 10 containers of prescription drugs and a can of gasoline. But Framstead said the gun and the gasoline--with handcuffs to trap himself in the burning car--were backups in case the pills failed.

Jurors are scheduled to hear closing arguments on Monday. If convicted of using a gun in a first-degree murder, Framstead faces 30 years to life in prison.