!!!Reading M. Ayoob’s “In the Gravest Extreme” could have helped, let’s learn and remember!!!

Today: December 29, 1999 at 11:11:06 PST

Shooting at home described
By Bill Gang
<[email protected]>
LAS VEGAS SUN

After being incapacitated by stun guns and beaten by intruders in his home, Thomas Gaule managed to grab his shotgun and regain control of the house as the bandits fled through the front door.

The first intruder, Rick Tripp, had cleared the door and was heading down the driveway with the second man, Jason Lamb, close behind.

It was then that Gaule fired at the intruders, Deputy District Attorney Bill Koot said during opening statements at Gaule’s manslaughter trial Tuesday.

The shotgun was loaded with a variety of shells, from birdshot that carries many tiny pellets to 00-buckshot that contains just nine .33-caliber projectiles to “slugs,” which are thumb-sized projectiles.

As Lamb sought escape, a slug ripped into his back and came out through his stomach, killing him, Koot said. The slug apparently then hit Tripp in the leg and lodged there, he said.

Another round was fired by Gaule and a 00-buckshot pellet hit Tripp in his right arm.

Koot emphasized to the jury in District Judge Mark Gibbons’ courtroom that up to that point everything Gaule had done was legal.

But he alleged that what happened after that as Gaule pursued Tripp down the street on Oct. 25, 1998, was the basis for the voluntary manslaughter charge against the 35-year-old defendant.

Koot said that Gaule fired three more shots while chasing Tripp hundreds of feet from the home near Alta and Buffalo drives.

One neighbor told authorities that Tripp was yelling, “No!” in a futile effort to dissuade Gaule, Koot said.

The veteran prosecutor said another neighbor would testify that she called to Gaule not to shoot again, yet he did.

One shot peppered Tripp across his back, “from head to toe,” with BB-sized birdshot, Koot said.

But it was the sixth and last shot — another slug — that Koot contended killed Tripp by ripping through his back and “blowing a lung out.” When Tripp died, he was 500 feet from Gaule’s house and his course was marked with a trail of blood and spent shotgun shells.

The indictment alleges that 500 feet was just too far.

“Those shots were not a necessary self defense to prevent imminent harm,” Koot said, explaining that is the standard to make the shooting of a home intruder justifiable.

He contended the shots were fired “in the heat of passion” by a man who “was acting in the spirit of revenge.”

Koot explained that killing someone in the heat of passion is voluntary manslaughter, not murder, under Nevada law. If convicted, Gaule faces a maximum penalty of four to 10 years in prison with an identical term added because a deadly weapon was used. Probation would also be a possibility.

Gaule is not charged in the slaying of Lamb because it occurred justifiably at the defendant’s home.

Defense attorney Peter Christiansen Jr. did not dispute the chain of events but argued during his opening statement that Tripp’s death was “justifiable.”

“It was right and was the same thing any person in Nevada would have done under the same circumstances,” Christiansen said.

“The question for you is where in the state of Nevada do you draw the line,” he told the jury. “The state has drawn an imaginary line where it says it was not reasonable.

“You and I have to try to figure out what is reasonable,” he continued.

He characterized Lamb and Tripp as “thugs and thieves” who were under the influence of drugs when they broke into the home while Gaule was shopping for groceries and then attacked him when he returned home.

“They beat the bejeezus out of him,” Christiansen said. “He required stitches across his face. The state is asking you to convict him for protecting his home after being beaten.”

Koot agreed that the men’s conduct “not only was criminal but reprehensible” but said that once the danger passed and Tripp was well away from the home, Gaule had no legal right to gun him down.

Koot noted that the only weapons the assailants carried were stun guns they had purchased two days before and which required close contact to be effective.