Testimony begins in Kent trial
By Bobbi Mlynar , Brandy Nance
Originally published 03:32 p.m., June 24, 2008
Updated 04:19 p.m., June 24, 2008
3:31 p.m.
Dr. Marshall Havenhill II testified next. Havenhill is a deputy at the coroner’s office.
He testified that he received a call about the shooting that morning. He said it was cold and icy on the roads. When he arrived on scene he went to the ambulance where Arndt’s body was. He said Arndt was pale and had a wound 2 cm above the nipple and just to the right of the sternum. He could not find an exit wound. Havenhill said the time of death used was 9:20 a.m. because that was the time the electrocardiogram read there was no heart activity.
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3:21 p.m.
Testimony continues this afternoon in the trial of Theron Thomas Kent, who is accused of involuntary manslaughter and several violations of hunting laws in the death of Beau Arndt.
A first responder testified that he gave Arndt mouth to mouth when he arrived on scene. A law enforcement officer performed compressions on Arndt. The first responder and the law enforcement officer gave CPR until the ambulance arrived. Arndt never regained consciousness during CPR, the witness testified.
Richard Gould, a firefighter/paramedic in Emporia testified next saying he was on duty on Dec. 15 when the call of the shooting came in. Gould testified that the call came in around 8:30 a.m. and the ambulance arrived on scene around 8:58 a.m. The field where Arndt was laying was muddy so the ambulance couldn’t be driven into it. Once paramedics arrived on scene CPR was stopped to check for a pulse. Gould said there was a large amount of blood and he did not find an exit wound on Arndt. Arndt was loaded onto a spine board and into a truck where he was transported to the ambulance. There, an autopulse belt was placed on Arndt. The belt gives compression.p>
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Efforts to save Beau Arndt's life were revealed this morning in Lyon County District Court when the prosecution played a 22-minute recording of the 911 call to report an accidental shooting in northwest Lyon County.
The recording was played after opening arguments in the trial of Theron Thomas Kent of Topeka, who is accused of involuntary manslaughter and several violations of hunting laws in Arndt's death.
Arndt, 18, was killed as he and two friends were hunting about 8:30 a.m. on Dec. 15, 2007, in a field slightly north of the intersection of Roads D and 310.
Kent is accused of shooting from the road at decoys the Arndt hunting party had placed around their goose blinds.
The prosecution alleges that the bullet from Kent's rifle struck Arndt in the chest and killed him.
The defense contends that the fragmented bullet removed from Arndt did not come from Kent's rifle and that the fatal shot was fired by another of several people who were hunting in the area that morning.
A recording of the 911 call for help was played Tuesday morning after testimony from Brenda Strawder, Lyon County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher, and Sarah Myers, communications operator for the Emporia Police Department. Myers received the initial call at EPD, which receives all 911 calls in the county. She notified Strawder at sheriff’s office. Strawder dispatched deputies to the scene and Myers and her partner made sure an ambulance was on the way.
A young man’s voice told Myers, “I think my friend got shot. ... Somebody drove by and I think he got shot.”
The dispatcher asked for information and whether the victim was conscious.
“No,” the young man responded, before beginning to speak alternately to the dispatcher and to Arndt. “C’mon, Beau. ... Yeah, I think he’s breathing. ... I don’t see blood or anything, but he was shot in the chest. C’mon, Beau.”
The young man asked if they should put Arndt in the truck and bring him to town; he was told to wait for the ambulance.
“C’mon, Beau. C’mon, Beau,” the voice pleaded with Arndt again and again.
“Is he still breathing?” the dispatcher asked.
“Yes, he’s still breathing.”
The young man said that Arndt was not responding and not talking, and asked if the ambulance was almost to his location. The dispatcher said it was on the way.
“Oh, my God; oh, my God,” the young man said moments later. “I’m here with an older man and he thinks he’s gone.”
A second male voice came on the line and said that he was about 70 yards from Arndt when the shooting happened. He described seeing a red older truck drive past on the road.
“They saw these decoys and they were poachin’,” the voice said. “That’s what happened. We need a sheriff out here.”
The dispatcher calmly gave the men instructions to perform CPR on Arndt; one of the men repeated each instruction to the other.
“He’s dyin’,” one of the men said. “He’s gone, but we’ll keep doin’ it.”
One of the male voices verified there was nothing in Arndt’s mouth, but that there was an odor of bile..
“They’re coming as fast as they can,” the 911dispatcher said of the ambulance. “You guys are doing a good job, okay? ... Just keep going.”
Later, after several minutes of CPR, the recorder registered a male voice saying, “I hear ‘em. I hear ‘em. I hear sirens.”
The voice reported seeing a white pickup truck approaching. Subsequent testimony revealed that Deputy Pat Stevenson was driving the pickup, which belongs to the sheriff’s department; he was the first emergency worker to reach the scene of the shooting.
“Keep it going ‘til he gets right there to you, okay?” the dispatcher said. “You guys have done an excellent job.”
That recording and dispatchers’ testimony followed opening statements Tuesday morning by Assistant Lyon County Attorney Rick Buck and defense attorney Don Hoffman of Topeka.
Buck set the scene of the morning of Dec. 15, 2008.
Arndt, a college freshman, and his friends had permission to set up their duck blinds and decoys on the property of Gary Jensen, just west of the intersection of Roads 310 and D.
“And Gary Jensen will tell you they were the only people authorized to hunt on that field on that day,” Buck said.
As they were setting up their blinds, a flock of prairie chickens flew overhead and Tom Glass fired at them.
“That was the only shots that were fired until the one that killed Beau Arndt sometime later,” Buck said.
Jackson heard Arndt yell “more than once” after each had settled into his blind. Glass, who had heard gunfire and thought one of the young men had shot, looked out of his blind and saw Jackson motioning him “to come and see if there was anything wrong with Beau because of what they heard,” Buck said.
“They found him lying there on his back, his eyes wide open, gasping for breath, making sort of a gurgling sound and a small amount of blood on his chest.”
The coroner’s examination later showed that a gunshot had gone into the chest and struck the heart, liver, kidney and had fragmented in an area around the hip.
The bullet fragment and Kent’s .257-caliber rifle were sent to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation for analysis. However, firearms examiner David Wright said that the bullet was too fragmented to meet KBI criteria.
“But he found more matching characteristics than would have been” expected, Buck said. “He is confident that it did come from that gun.”
Buck said that evidence will show that Kent told investigating officers that he saw a coyote and took his gun from the truck.
“(He) opened his door, stood in the roadway, placed the gun on the door and fired a shot, he said, at a coyote,” Buck said. “The state maintains that shot ... killed Beau Arndt.”
Buck said that investigators had learned that Kent, his brother David, and an employee had borrowed a cabin west of Americus on Road 240 to stay at the night before the shooting. When they woke the next morning, they drove around county roads in Kent’s pickup truck.
Kent, who was contacted at his fence company on Dec. 19, came back to this area and retraced his group’s activities the day of the shooting, Buck said.
“They even went back to the cabin and he revealed to the officers that the rifle he had fired ... was under a mattress,” Buck said. Kent also pulled out a shell casing. Those items were taken into evidence.
Buck said he has a videotape statement done with Deputy Pat Stevenson, Det. Travis Mishler, and KBI Senior Special Agent Bill Halvorsen.
“Nobody claims that the death of Beau Arndt was intended by the defendant on Dec. 15 of last year,” Buck said. “... But an accident can be a crime, and the state has charged crimes against the defendant based on his actions of that day.”
The State of Kansas will ask the jury to find Kent guilty of involuntary manslaughter and hunting and fishing law violations, Buck said.
Defense attorney Hoffman said he will show that Kent did not kill Beau Arndt.
“The evidence is going to show in this case, through the testimony of a preeminent expert in ballistics, that the fragments that were located during this autopsy of this young man did not flow from the barrel of Tom Kent’s rifle,” Hoffman said.
He said that the Lyon County area was rife with hunting activity that day and “the evidence will show that there were any number of individuals in the area who were not only hunting but were in possession of rifles of this type with the ability to launch the very type of projectile that sound up in this young man’s body.”
Hoffman accused law enforcement of conducting a “tertiary” investigation in the case.
“... (T)he evidence will show that the state was so committed based on the circumstances of what they saw in a very cursory manner, it was so committed to the prosecution of Tom Kent ... there was no going back to follow up on what should have been a more exhaustive investigation,” Hoffman said.
“The evidence will show we are not talking about rocket science here. We’re talking about ballistic data, ballistic examination that have been available to the most rudimentary of law enforcement agencies.”
Hoffman said that law enforcement failed to follow through on a tip that a Morris County man was the person involved in Beau’s death. They went to the man’s house near Council Grove and left after he did not answer the door.
“The officers left and never followed up,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman asked Chief Judge Merlin Wheeler, after morning recess, to sequester witnesses because some gave conflicting reports and might be influenced by hearing testimony from others.
Wheeler granted the request and cautioned witnesses not to discuss their testimony with other witnesses. No requests for exemption were made by either the defense or prosecution.
Deputy Pat Stevenson testified to what he had seen and learned after arriving on the scene of the shooting before 9 a.m. that day.
Stevenson said he performed chest compressions on Arndt for 15 to 20 minutes and did not see any signs or breathing or heart rate at any time.
Randy L. Edmunds, a first responder from the Allen-Admire district, arrived later and assisted with the CPR.
Because of the condition of the field, the ambulance could not reach Arndt and emergency medical technicians were brought to the blind area by pickup truck. Arndt later was loaded into the back of the patrol truck and taken to the ambulance.
By that time, Stevenson testified, Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Elwood Phelps had joined in the search for the red pickup truck and Mishler had been called in to work the accident scene.
Hoffman asked that Stevenson not be released from his subpoena and that he remain available to testify again, if necessary.
Mishler testified about his role as investigator prior to Stevenson’s testimony.
He said that a heavy snow was falling and the wind was blowing when he arrived at Roads D and 310, and that Arndt’s body was in the back of the ambulance.
Mishler, who also attended the autopsy, brought in 19 photographs taken during the investigation; all but two were admitted as evidence during his testimony after Hoffman objected to admitting Photos 20 and 58. Wheeler said he would reserve his ruling on those photos.
Mishler also remains subject to being recalled to the stand, and remains under subpoena and abiding by the sequester ruling.
Check back later for updated information.
TacoBellB (anonymous) says...
I can't imagine what this must be like for the Arndt family.
I'm shocked that the defense is claiming the bullet did not come from this guy's gun - seems like a last ditch effort of an excuse. Yes, I am assuming this guy is guilty, but wouldn't we all have had just a tad bit more sympathy for the man if he had at least admitted his wrong, taken responsibility for his actions (I'm sure he never dreamed he would have killed anyone, but stupidity doesn't = innocence) and plead guilty instead of carrying out a gut wrenching trial for the family? I hope when they prove his guilt that they throw the book at him now.
June 25, 2008 at 8:19 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
jayhawker (anonymous) says...
Right on the money, TacoBellB.
June 25, 2008 at 4:44 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )