Assault Suspect Rebuts Agent About Confrontation at Bar : Testimony: Larry Hall of Thousand Oaks says he never intended to use the knife and doesn’t know where it came from.

A Thousand Oaks man on trial for allegedly threatening a Secret Service agent testified Wednesday that he remembers carrying an open knife inside a bar but doesn’t remember why.

Larry Robert Hall, facing a felony assault charge after a confrontation with the off-duty agent, also admitted drinking heavily the day of the alleged assault.

But he denied the testimony of agent James Carter, who said Hall came at him with an open folding knife muttering racial slurs and forced him to draw his service revolver to protect himself.

Hall, 52, was arrested by Ventura County sheriff’s deputies at Shady’s bar on East Thousand Oaks Boulevard early on the morning of Dec. 18. Carter, who is black, told police that Hall had threatened him with a knife.

No shots were fired and no one was seriously injured in the scuffle.

Hall, a self-employed painting contractor who is white, testified Wednesday that he never made any racial remarks to Carter, and said he merely asked Carter to leave because he had been bothering him.

“He was staring at me for an hour and a half and I didn’t like it,” Hall said.

Hall said he remembers being inside the bar with the open knife, but said he did not know where he had gotten it and maintained that he never intended to use it. He said he stepped away from the bar and closed the 4 1/2-inch blade before setting it six or eight feet from where Carter was sitting.

“I turned to my right, took the first available seat next to Jim and sat down,” Hall told the jury, referring to Carter by his first name. “I said something to Jim to the effect that it was time for him to go, and at that time he pulled his gun.”

But Carter, a 43-year-old Thousand Oaks resident, and another witness, Shady’s bartender Barbara Pryor, both testified that Hall had been making disparaging remarks about blacks and about the changing racial makeup of Thousand Oaks before threatening Carter with the knife.

“That doesn’t sound like anything I said,” Hall said under cross-examination.

Pryor also said she had asked Hall to leave the bar earlier, but Hall said he never heard that request.

Hall also testified that sheriff’s deputies beat him with unknown objects as he was leaving the bar.

“The minute I hit the door I was hit on the back of the head two or three times,” the defendant said. “They stopped hitting me and then asked Jim if that was enough, and he said yes.”

Defense attorney Edward A. Whipple produced photographs that he said showed the injuries. But Hall was vague when asked by Deputy Dist. Atty. Isa Sawasaki which deputy had struck him.

“You didn’t look at the men who you thought just beat you?” Sawasaki asked him. “That’s correct,” answered Hall, who said it took a month for the bruises to heal.

Hall said he was drinking “approximately three or four six-packs (of beer) a day” during the months prior to his arrest, but said he has undergone rehabilitation for his drinking since then.

The trial before Ventura County Superior Court Judge James M. McNally will resume Monday, when an addiction specialist who treated Hall is scheduled to complete his testimony.