AUBURN – The father of the man who shot and killed Melissa Mendoza testified Wednesday that her body – as well as a gun near her hand – had been moved after police arrived.

Charles Roberts, who lives in Sabattus near the house of his son Daniel, 37, said in Androscoggin County Superior Court that he was the first one at the scene of the shooting early in the morning of Aug. 15, 2005.

Roberts said his son called him about 1:15 a.m., waking him as he was lying on the couch.

“‘I just shot Melissa,'” his son said of his ex-girlfriend. “‘Come get Savanna.'”

Savanna, the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, was at the center of a bitter custody battle between her father, Daniel, 37, and her mother, Melissa, 29.

Roberts hurried to his son’s house to retrieve his granddaughter. That’s when he saw Mendoza’s body slumped on the floor of his son’s garage near the pedestrian door.

Police have said she was shot in the back of the head from about two feet away with Roberts’ .38-caliber handgun.

Mendoza looked as if she were kneeling, Charles Roberts said. Her feet were together, her head on the floor. He couldn’t see her left hand. Her right hand was by her head on the floor within a foot of a silver-colored gun, he said. There was no blood, he said.

There was nothing else near Mendoza’s body, he said.

Earlier in the trial, prosecutors introduced police photos that showed a Pepsi bottle lying under Mendoza’s hair near the left side of her head. Her handbag was shown to the right of her head, on her hair. Her cell phone also was pictured on top of her hair.

Roberts said none of those items was present when he arrived. He also said he didn’t see a second gun, dark-colored, that also is pictured in police photos. Daniel Roberts told police he used that weapon to shoot Mendoza in self-defense because she had pointed a gun at him and told him she was going to shoot Savanna, Roberts and then herself.

Roberts said he woke his granddaughter and left through the front door with her. He took her back to his home. He then met a Sabattus police officer to show her the way to the scene of the shooting.

He walked into Daniel Roberts’ garage a second time on his way to get Savanna’s bottle in the house. Sabattus police officer Katherine Irazzary was on the floor with Mendoza, checking her vital signs, Roberts said.

He said he told the officer she should move the gun away from Mendoza’s hand, believing she was still alive and afraid she might reach for it.

“Are you going to move that thing?” he said he asked her.

When he came back with the bottle, the gun had been moved down toward Mendoza’s knee, he said.

The third time he saw Mendoza’s body was after he led emergency medical technicians to the house, he told the court. He poked his head into the garage and asked Irazzary whether Mendoza was all right. Irazzary shook her head.

After bringing Androscoggin County Sheriff’s deputies to the scene, Roberts said he sat with his son in the house.

“We were both all shook up,” Roberts said, wiping his eyes with a tissue.

“It felt like a lifetime,” he said. After about 15 minutes, he was told to go outside and wait in his truck in the rain. A half-hour later, he left.

Defense attorneys presented their case with a second full day of testimony, calling witnesses who said Mendoza had withdrawn a protection from abuse order against Daniel Roberts, had assaulted him, once picked up a knife to stab him and wished him dead. Two witnesses said she planned to disappear with Savanna in Kentucky where Roberts was unlikely to find them.

Ashley Alden, 23, of Paris said she once saw Mendoza scratch Roberts down his back, drawing blood, after an argument.

Breanna Bolduc, 16, said Mendoza told her roughly three hours before she was killed: “‘I hate Danny. I hope he dies. I could kill him.'”

Daniel Roberts’ housekeeper testified that she saw a silver-colored gun wedged between work jeans stacked in Roberts’ bedroom closet one day before Mendoza stayed at his home for the weekend – four days before she was killed.

Daniel Roberts, during a district court hearing on the status of his daughter, had testified that he noticed that same gun missing around 5:15 p.m. on the evening after Mendoza had left his home after spending the weekend.

Charles Roberts said his son told him later that evening that Mendoza had taken some items with her from his home.

Deputy Attorney General William Stokes asked Charles Roberts about the gun.

“He never mentioned the fact that the gun was missing?” Stokes asked.

“No, he didn’t,” Roberts said.

Stokes quizzed Roberts about his eyesight, noting his wife told police: “He can hardly see,” and required surgery. He also reminded Roberts that he had shown where the gun had been in relation to Mendoza’s body when he testified earlier before a grand jury. Roberts showed it being farther down her side than where he testified Wednesday he first saw it, Stokes said.

Stokes sought to discredit other defense witnesses Wednesday, noting they failed to tell police about testimony implicating Mendoza.