Former OCCC officer admits to shooting his mother

A former Correctional Division training officer took the stand Friday at his murder and kidnapping trial and admitted to shooting his 66-year-old mother in the thigh in June 2016, but says he doesn't remember shot twice in the head which would have killed her. instantly or within minutes, as a deputy medical examiner testified.

When Deputy Prosecutor Molly O'Neill asked Anthony F. Pereira II if he shot his mother above the knee, he paused and replied, “Yes, I did.”

But when asked about the shooting in the head, arm and eye on June 10, 2016, at 3:30 p.m., he replied: “I don't remember any of that. I just remember screaming. He mentioned that his neighbor reported hearing a woman screaming. “It was me who was screaming. Everything was going so fast, in and out, I don't know what was happening.

Dr. Rachel Lange, former first deputy medical examiner in Honolulu, who performed Barbara Pereira's autopsy on June 11, 2016, found that without treatment, the leg injury could also have caused death independently. The cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds, she said.

Pereira does not deny shooting his mother to death. His attorney, Harrison Kiehm, is attempting to prove the affirmative defense that his client suffered extreme mental and emotional disturbance, which caused him to lose control of his actions or conduct and commit the criminal act, as a felony passionate.

If successful, Pereira could be convicted of the lesser crime of manslaughter, rather than second-degree murder, which carries a possible life sentence with the possibility of parole.

Pereira told the court that on Friday June 10, 2016, his mother came to his house and he saw photos on his mother's phone, which she had left on the counter.

“I saw a photo of my wife looking like she had blood all over her face. It scared me. …There was this image of Autumn (his daughter), like someone had ripped her face off. …I got scared and started to panic.

“I wondered why my mother had these photos on the phone,” he said. “I thought my mother killed my wife and daughter.”

But Pereira appeared perplexed when the deputy prosecutor asked him why he thought his daughter and wife were dead, when he said earlier that he had spoken to them a day or two before the shooting and that his mother had come home several times over a period of time. three days from June 8 to June 10, 2016.

He kept saying he couldn't remember everything because everything was happening so fast.

“My mother was the love of my life,” he said, and she planned to move in to watch over him.

The 52-year-old said he did not use methamphetamine in the days before his mother's fatal shooting, or on that day.

But Dodie Guzman, a Waianae woman he met at a mutual friend's house who claims she was held captive in his Maili home for three days, said she saw him smoking a pipe on June 10, 2016.

The Honolulu Police Department's drug lab tested a crystalline substance, found in a plastic bag that fell out of his shorts at the hospital, which came back positive for methamphetamine.

Psychologist John Compton, who was called as a defense witness, testified that he evaluated Pereira three times for court-ordered mental examinations to determine his fitness to stand trial on October 10, 2016, on April 18, 2017 and July 11, 2017.

Initially, he was not found fit to stand trial.

Compton initially thought Pereira might have schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and thought he should be in the state hospital, but he later ruled those out.

Compton said Pereira had fluctuations in his depression and his severe methamphetamine use disorder was in remission in a controlled environment, as was his moderate alcohol use disorder.

In his most recent evaluation, Compton said Pereira clearly understood his legal status and its possible consequences, that his use of alcohol and methamphetamine was seen as a way to cope with depression and that the use of methamphetamine was likely the most contributing factor.

Compton said state hospital staff were reluctant to say Pereira was exaggerating symptoms of psychosis or functional impairments.

“I saw people who had strong feelings about their parents and who could attack them, cause them trouble. It may seem normal, but they have issues they don’t understand,” Compton said.

He said people “who have taken methamphetamine may appear intelligent, but could have brain damage.”

Kiehm asked: “Are you saying emotions can dictate cognitive ability?

Compton replied: “Yes. »

Pereira denies extending the invitation to Guzman to take a short trip home and says she invited him to her home and made it clear he was just interested in talking.

Guzman said Pereira was depressed and kept talking about his wife, looking at her wedding dress hanging in the house, but he wouldn't let her go. She tried to support him.

“She was just there for therapy, I guess, someone I could talk to,” Pereira said, but he didn't detain her and allowed her to take his truck to change.

But Pereira said he was embarrassed that Guzman was there when his mother arrived because he was confiding in “a complete stranger,” but he couldn't tell his mother about the things he found out about the affairs of his wife.

His wife blames herself for his years of infidelity, including one involving Pereira's colleague, and for leaving her husband several times.

“It was my fault because I was depressed about myself,” said April Pereira, who testified Friday as a defense witness. “If I had been honest with my husband, this would never have happened.”

She explained that things got worse after her husband fell at work in 2013 and was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. Prescription steroids combined with methamphetamine use “were the two main things” that caused him to act as he did on June 10, 2016, she said.

She said she was behind on the mortgage and other bills.