Trial Begins in 2003 Shooting of Lawyer Outside Courthouse

A lawyer who was shot five times outside the Van Nuys courthouse two years ago by a man contesting one of his probate cases confronted his alleged assailant in court Tuesday and told jurors how a tree served as his only protection from the gunman.

Attorney Gerald E. Curry described leaving a court hearing Oct. 31, 2003, when defendant William Strier approached him on a breezeway and asked his name. When he responded, Curry recalled, he then heard “a very loud pop or bang.”

Curry said he fell to all fours and scrambled to get behind the tree, where he and the accused gunman engaged in a bizarre game of cat and mouse that was captured on video by a contingent of national news media covering pretrial proceedings in the Robert Blake murder case.

“I was trying to use the tree to protect myself,” recalled Curry, largely recovered from bullet wounds to the forearm, neck and shoulder. “If he went in one direction, I went in the other.”

Strier, who appeared in court on a hospital gurney, can only appear three hours a day because of a long-standing back injury. The 66-year-old Thousand Oaks man has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder of Curry and making criminal threats against Evelyn Murphy, who oversaw Strier’s trust. His attorney said he was under the influence of Demerol at the time of the shooting and was suffering from a “blackout” and a “psychotic break” when he confronted Curry.

In his opening statement Tuesday, Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Falco said Strier had never met Curry, who was representing Murphy in ending her role overseeing Strier’s trust. But Strier had became so enraged about how he felt the trust was being handled that he attacked Curry.

The trial in front of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rand S. Rubin is expected to take three weeks.

On Tuesday, jurors were twice shown video of the shooting, once during opening statements and later during Curry’s testimony.

In it, Strier can be seen repeatedly firing a handgun, then tucking the weapon in his pocket and nonchalantly walking away, with a phalanx of news cameramen following.

Falco told jurors that a cameraman overheard Strier say, “That’s what you get for stealing my money!” Moments later, Strier was tackled by a traffic court judge as Curry, dazed and bleeding, was aided by police.

Defense attorney Arna Zlotnik challenged the notion that the shooting was premeditated and argued that it grew out of desperation over “a trust fund run amok.”

Strier needed immediate access to his trust to pay for a back operation, but his agony was compounded by mismanagement and delays in court hearings in which he sought to remove Murphy, Zlotnik said.

What’s more, she said, her client was upset about money that Murphy and Curry had moved from the fund for their pay. Murphy and Curry contend they took only the amounts due them.

“My client was under the influence of Demerol,” Zlotnik said in her opening statement. “It affected his mind on the day of the shooting.”