LEWISTON – Daniel Roberts says he shot Melissa Mendoza in the back of her head from a distance of about two feet after she said she was going to kill him, their daughter and then herself.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” he told investigators hours after the early Aug. 15 homicide in Sabattus.
More than an hour of a three-hour interview taped by state police investigators was played for Justice Joyce Wheeler on Thursday afternoon in District Court. Wheeler is presiding over a hearing to determine if Roberts, who was arrested last week, should be allowed to be released on bail.
His attorney, Leonard Sharon, says he should.
“He’s no flight risk. He has no violent history, no convictions,” Sharon said.
Assistant Attorney General William Stokes, who is prosecuting the case with Assistant A.G. Fern LaRochelle, declined to comment, saying he doesn’t discuss pending cases.
Roberts, 35, has maintained all along that he was acting in self defense when he killed his ex-girlfriend. He and Mendoza, who was 29, had a child, Savannah, together. She was at the center of a bitter custody dispute between Roberts and Mendoza.
She had spent the weekend before the shooting visiting with Savannah at Roberts’ secluded home in Sabattus while he stayed at his father’s home a short distance away.
During the police interview, he said he returned to his home Sunday evening, Aug. 14, after Mendoza had left. At some point during the night, he noticed that a chrome-plated short-barreled five-shot .38-caliber revolver was missing from his master bedroom closet.
After midnight on Aug. 15, he told investigators Mendoza called him wanting to talk about their situation and asking if she could return to the house.
When she arrived, Roberts met her in an attached garage. Because he noticed the .38 was missing, and because, he said, Mendoza had threatened to shoot him earlier, he put a .38 in his own back pocket.
When she got to the house, he said she threatened him, their daughter and herself and flashed the .38 that Roberts says she stole from his closet.
“No, no, Melissa, don’t do it that way,” he told investigators he said to her.
Minutes earlier, he told them that he was thinking, “I’m not letting her go into the house” to carry out her threat.
“Then she took another step and I knew she was serious.”
He shot her.
“It was self-defense,” he adds.
Through State Police Detective Jennifer King, however, Stokes introduced testimony casting some doubt on Roberts’ account.
King, the lead investigator for the case, said forensics specialists weren’t able to retrieve any fingerprints from the gun that Roberts said Mendoza was holding.
And, she added, the specialists found Roberts’ DNA on the weapon, and that of another person, but not Mendoza’s.
The hearing resumes at 8:30 this morning in Courtroom 2, Lewiston District Court.
The state is expected to put more witnesses on the stand before resting sometime this afternoon. Sharon said he expects to conclude the defense’s case Monday.
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