The trial of Thomas Forbes entered its second day Wednesday with wildly divergent witness accounts of the June shooting that blinded his cousin Krystal Dudley amid a dispute over a parcel of land in western Albemarle County.
But before a jury could hear those accounts, they got a short lesson in firearm safety from a forensic scientist.
"Don’t point the firearm at something you’re not prepared to shoot," said Lauren Claytor, the firearms supervisor at the Virginia Department of Forensic Services.
Claytor was among several witnesses asked about firearm safety — key to discerning how a double-action, .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver in Forbes’ hands went off on June 23, permanently disabling Dudley, his first cousin once removed and the mother of three teenage girls.
Claytor testified that it would take 12.4 pounds of force to discharge the pistol when not cocked and just 2.9 pounds of force when when cocked.
The prosecutor asked if the gun could fire without sustained pressure on the trigger.
"It would not," Claytor answered.
But Gary Pleasants, a witness for the defense and a retired Charlottesville police lieutenant who now manages a large Shenandoah Valley gun shop, lent credibility to the defense’s argument that it was Dudley, grabbing for the gun, that caused it to fire.
"If it’s pulled against the finger, it’s going to discharge," Pleasants testified.
The prosecution attempted to ask Pleasants to recite the "four rules of gun safety," specifically No. 3: Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. But on a day when 14 people were slated to testify, Judge Cheryl Higgins sustained an objection to that inquiry.
Forbes has been charged with the reckless handling of a firearm, the use of a firearm in commission of a felony and aggravated malicious wounding — the latter of which could see him sentenced to 20 years to life in prison if he’s found guilty.
While heaps of evidence indicated that the acrimony between the 62-year-old Forbes and 37-year-old Dudley had been brewing for months over who owned a family property on Boonesville Road in the western reaches of Albemarle County, a witness to the shooting blamed Forbes’ wife for launching the day’s violence.
"Thomas’ wife slapped Krystal, and that initiated a fight," testified Travis Lambert, Dudley’s boyfriend.
He said the two women stopped fighting after Forbes fired a warning shot into the air, but that Forbes continued to point the gun at Dudley.
"He kept redirecting the gun back to the face area," Lambert testified.
"She had her arms extended in front of her face," Lambert said. "She maybe pushed his arm out of the way."
After Lambert emotionally recounted the moment the gun went off, he was asked what Forbes did next.
"He kept waving the gun saying, ‘She f’ing deserved it. She f’ing deserved it.’ He said it three times," Lambert testified.
Lambert’s mother, Melissa Lambert, testified that she, standing on a doormat at an entrance to the house on the property, provided similar testimony, down to the allegation that Forbes first fired a warning shot.
But when it was the accused man’s turn to give evidence, defense attorney Scott Goodman called three neighbors — Jane Morris, Daniel Morris and Peter McCauley — each of whom testified to hearing just one gunshot that morning.
Albemarle County police Sgt. Jordan DeLange testified that he found one spent casing and four live rounds inside the five-shooter which Forbes, whom he described as cooperative, produced.
The defense called Forbes’ wife Deborah, who said she and her husband came to the property that day with good news for the tenant living there. The lodger is an elderly relative of the property’s prior owner, and the Forbeses had come to tell him he could remain on the property.
It was Frazier and Lambert who incited the violence, according to Deborah Forbes.
"They came running at us, saying they were going to whup our asses," she testified.
In a plaintive voice, she told the jurors that she asked the woman in the house, unaware that she was Lambert’s mother, if she could use the phone to call 911.
"And she said no," said a tearful Deborah Forbes, disputing that she threw the first punch or any punch.
Frazier, she said, attacked her by grabbing her ponytail, pulling it down, and punching her.
"She violently beat me," she said. "She folded me like a napkin."
She said she begged Dudley to relent and told her husband’s cousin that she had recently suffered a stroke.
"She said, ‘As if I give a s–t.’"
The defense introduced about a dozen photographs of the various injuries Deborah Forbes sustained on June 23, including what looked like bruises across her face, arms, neck and upper body and a black eye that she said began developing immediately.
She said her husband routinely carried a gun for shooting vermin, specifically snakes and opossums, and that the beating stopped only when the gun appeared. She said Frazier was trying to wrest the gun from her husband’s hands after having torn the man’s shirt and broken his glasses.
"He didn’t shoot Krystal," she testified. "She tried to take the gun from his hands."
At times, Deborah Forbes verbally meandered — something she blamed on her stroke — and the judge repeatedly implored her to stop augmenting answers with additional information.
"She does tend to go off the subject," the judge observed.
But one subject that first appeared digressive later explained how the trouble over the land began.
Family patriarch James MacAuthur Shifflett died in 2022 without a legal will. About two weeks before the shooting, a lawsuit alleging that Dudley’s mother and others tried to submit a bogus will which would have bolstered their share of the estate was decided in favor of Deborah Forbes.
She recalled happier times at the property before the Shiffletts, the Morrises and the Fraziers — including Krystal Frazier Dudley — drifted apart.
"Back in the day," she said, "we all used to come together at Christmastime."
Source: www.dailyprogress.com