Tensions over family finances and his 14-year-old grandson not eating his vegetables led a local man to shoot his wife and daughter multiple times in 2015, according to testimony Thursday during the first day of his double capital murder trial.
Eric Allen Reid, 57, faces the death penalty or life in prison if convicted of the two counts of capital murder for the Oct. 19, 2015, shooting deaths of his wife, Laura J. Reid, 57, and daughter, Mary Ann Reid, 32, at their 607 Northwood Trail residence.
"This is a simple case as far as the facts," Chief Deputy Prosecutor Joe Graham, who is representing the state along with Deputy Prosecutor Kara Petro, told the seven-man, five-woman Garland County Circuit Court jury during opening arguments.
"The state and the defense are in agreement on the facts," Graham said, detailing how Reid reportedly gunned down the two victims in the presence of his younger daughter, Heather Reid, then 20, and then met responding Garland County sheriff's deputies and surrendered without incident.
Graham said Reid, in a videotaped statement to sheriff's investigators, talked about being "frustrated and angry" with the way his wife and oldest daughter were spending money despite financial problems they were having. He also felt his daughter was acting more like her mother, his ex-wife, and had recruited her stepmother to her side.
"He felt they were ganging up on him," Graham said. "He decided he was not going to lose everything he had worked for all his life because of them." In his statement, Reid admitted to shooting the two women.
Graham also noted there would be testimony from a detention center deputy who reportedly overheard Reid in February 2017 telling other inmates, "If you're going to shoot someone with a gun, make sure they die. That's what I did."
Attorney Dominique King, of Little Rock, who represents Reid along with Willard Proctor Jr. and Cara Boyd-Conners, told the jury the case was not about Reid's actions that night, but "his mental state at the time he committed the acts."
She argued his actions were not "premeditated and deliberate," but "a case of sudden impulse. It was the straw that broke the camel's back." She described Reid as a "hardworking man who loved his family" who had taken in his daughter Laura Reid's 14-year-old son after he started having behavioral problems at school "to try to help him."
King said the "bills were piling up," they were paying off two mortgages, had already filed for bankruptcy once, his grandson's behavior was regressing and he disagreed with how Mary Reid was raising him and he was recovering from prostate cancer and other health issues.
"He was overworked and felt unappreciated and emasculated," she said.
Heather Reid testified she lived with her father and mother, and Mary Reid and her two children had been living with them for about seven to eight months. On the day of the shooting, she and Mary Reid had gone out for a "sisters' day," shopping around town, and they later joined her mother and Mary Reid's children for lunch.
When they returned home shortly after 8:30 p.m., she said her father was in the garage. Her sister told her she was going to take their mother to get some beers, but then Mary and Eric Reid got into an argument in the garage.
"They were yelling at each other," she said, noting the argument was about Mary Reid not making her son eat his vegetables and how she "needed to be his parent and not his buddy."
She said Mary Reid came out of the garage and told her, "It's about to go down." She said Mary Reid sent her kids to their room and then she heard her father coming in from the garage and going into the house.
"Next thing I heard gunshots," she said, noting her sister was standing next to her. Then she saw her mother fall into the living room and land on her stomach. "I saw dad come around the corner and my mom rolled over and my dad looked at her and then shot her one more time," she said.
She said her mother said "Run!" and "it felt like a brief second or a pause in time and he turned the gun toward (Mary Reid) and she started to run." She said he fired at her sister, but the first shot missed. He fired again and the second shot hit her sister and also grazed her arm since she was still standing near her.
She said her sister ran toward the kitchen with her father walking after her and she jumped in between them to try to stop him. "He was like a wall of steel. His face was so red. The children were in the hallway holding on to each other."
Heather Reid said her sister tried to get out the back door to the deck but got shot again. She made it across the deck to the outside entrance to her parents' bedroom and fell inside on the floor. She said her father was still behind Mary Reid and looked down at her and shot her again.
She said her father then told her to call 911 and tell them her father had shot her mother and sister, so she made the call while he walked outside to the driveway.
Jurors listened to the lengthy 911 call where a frantic Heather Reid could be heard trying to explain what happened and saying, "There's blood all over." The 911 dispatcher tried to guide Heather Reid through the procedures of putting pressure on the wounds to stop the bleeding and cardiopulmonary resuscitation until deputies could get there.
Under cross by King, Heather Reid acknowledged she had told investigators that night she thought her dad had "blacked out." She also said her father loved his grandson and loved Mary Reid "as much as a father can love a daughter."
When questioned again by Petro, Heather Reid said she doesn't believe now her father had "blacked out."
Deputy Charles Delahunt, who along with Deputy Elwood McConnell were the first to get to the scene, testified how they ordered Eric Reid to the ground and he complied with all their commands. He said he was handcuffing him when a juvenile male, later identified as the grandson, came outside and said to Eric Reid, "'I hope you rot in hell for this.'"
Delahunt said Eric Reid looked at him and said, "'You're the reason for all this!"
In other testimony, Dr. Charles Kokes, the medical examiner at the state crime lab, said both Mary Reid and Laura Reid died as a result of multiple gunshot wounds and ruled their deaths as homicides.
He said Mary Reid sustained six gunshot wounds, which were caused by at least four separate gunshots and possibly six, depending on how the body was positioned at the time it was struck. He noted one shot that entered her right chest, traveled through her heart and both lungs, before exiting the left side of her chest, would have been fatal by itself.
He noted other gunshot wounds to her right shoulder, right wrist, right forearm and the tip of her left little finger could have been survivable if treated. A sixth shot to the back of her left thigh, which traveled through her pelvis and abdomen and exited her lower right chest, would have had to be fired as she was lying facedown on the floor.
Kokes said Laura Reid sustained three gunshot wounds caused by three separate shots, including one that entered her right lower back and exited her left abdomen, severing an aortic vein, causing a large amount of blood loss that would have been fatal.
He said a second wound to her right flank that traveled from the left to the right side of her abdomen, injuring her liver, was potentially survivable if treated immediately, but would also have cause a lot of blood loss.
A third wound to her left elbow, with the bullet going from the outer to the inner side of the elbow, was survivable, he said.
Under cross by Proctor, Kokes agreed there was no way to determine the order of the shots fired or how far away the shooter would have been standing, although he noted there was no evidence any of the shots were fired at close range.
The state rested its case on Thursday. The trial is scheduled to resume today with Judge John Homer Wright presiding.
Local on 03/02/2018