The bugged home of a Minnesota man recorded the chilling moments he encountered two teen burglars inside his house and appeared to take pleasure in shooting them dead.
Byron Smith claimed he was armed and ready for the intruders — Nick Brady, 17, and 18-year-old Haile Kifer — because of previous break-ins at his Little Falls home before the Thanksgiving Day 2012 shooting.
A 14-minute audio clip from his home security system was played for jurors in a Morrison County courthouse during his murder trial on Tuesday, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Smith, 65 — who faces first-degree murder charges for killing the teens — said he was in his favorite reading chair in the basement of his home when he heard his door handles rattle and spotted a suspect outside through a picture window.
Suddenly, the sound of broken glass can be heard in the audio recording before two gunshots.
“Oh,” Smith groaned before another crack of the gun.
“You’re dead.”
Investigators say the bullets were fired into Brady after he slipped into the house. After the gunfire, the clip records the sound of a tarp rustling and a body being dragged to a workshop in the basement — where Smith said he pulled the teen to keep him from bleeding on his carpet.
The noise of heavy breathing is heard in the background with the sound of Smith reloading his gun. Suddenly, a female’s voice can be heard.
“Nick,” said the voice before another gunshot is fired and Kifer is heard tumbling down the stairs.
“Oh, sorry about that,” Smith says.
“Oh my God!” the teen screams.
“You’re dying,” Smith tells her as more gunfire erupts. “B—h.”
The sound of another body getting dragged can be heard in the crystal-clear audio clip before Smith speaks to his victim again.
“B—h,” he says, before firing another round.
Smith maintains that he was defending himself when he shot the unarmed teens. He claimed that he was afraid because weapons had been stolen from his home in previous break-ins.
“I was far over the edge,” Smith told investigators during a recorded interview a day after the shootings, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “I was reacting.”
Smith admitted that he fired more than needed, but it stemmed from a life of fear. He also said that the extra shot into Kifer was to stop her from suffering.
He said he gave her “a good, clean finishing shot. … She gave out the death twitch.”
But prosecutors argue that the audio clip proves Smith was a vigilante waiting for the opportunity to ambush the intruders — and firing the extra shots crossed the line into murder.
A state trooper testified during the trial that Smith parked his truck about three blocks away from his house, an apparent attempt to make it seem as if no one were home.
He claimed that he waited until the next day to call a neighbor — who then called police — because he was still afraid of another intruder.
“The first couple hours I was just shaking and I gradually shifted into worrying,” he said during the interview. “I was pretty much afraid to do anything.”
His trial was slated to resume on Wednesday morning.
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