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WILKES-BARRE — When Scott Sargent was firing round after round at police from his assault rifle, he was so scared, he wasn’t even thinking, he testified Thursday.

Sargent, 33, of Shenandoah, was the only witness to take the stand for the defense. His testimony stood in stark contrast to the prosecution’s final four witnesses — all State Police crime scene experts who tried to illustrate each pull of Sargent’s trigger was an intentional act.

The defense, meanwhile, is trying to show Sargent didn’t know what he was doing when he opened fire in the parking lot of the Walmart in Wilkes-Barre Township.

Closing statements are set for Friday morning, and jurors will get the case after that.

Sargent’s testimony proved to be a dramatic high point of the trial, with almost all of defense attorney Melissa Sulima’s questions being tossed out under rapid-fire objections from prosecutor Jarrett Ferentino.

Sulima began her examination of Sargent directly, asking if he at any point intended to kill the police officers he was firing at in the Walmart lot on Oct. 17, 2015.

“Never,” Sargent answered.

From there, Sulima began to ask Sargent about his childhood. It seemed to be an an attempt to lead into the mental and sexual abuse Sargent faced as a child, along with psychiatric issues that run in his family. These issues were previously brought up at Sargent’s competency hearing in September.

Ferentino, however, objected to each of the questions, asking how they were relevant to the present case. Luzerne County Judge David Lupas sustained Ferentino’s objections, forcing Sulima to drop that line of questioning.

That was followed by a lengthy sidebar discussion between lawyers on each side and Lupas. There was then a 10-minute recess to allow the defense to regroup.

‘I’ve had enough’

When proceedings resumed, Sulima’s focus shifted to the day of the shooting.

Sargent described beginning the day early, driving with his girlfriend and two friends from the Pottsville area to the Mohegan Sun Pocono casino, arriving around 8:30 a.m.

While at the casino, Sargent said he became agitated. He felt he was being followed by a man and a woman. He and his girlfriend left the casino, and Sargent said he saw the pair who was following them again in the parking lot. Sargent and his girlfriend decided to stay in a hotel for the evening to figure out how to handle the apparent stalkers then headed to Walmart around noon to pick up supplies for their stay. Police have never confirmed that Sargent was actually being followed, and his defense attorney has argued he was in a delusional state that day.

When his girlfriend was shopping, Sargent said he noticed the man and the woman following him again. He moved his car behind the Walmart to get away from them, but he said they followed them. He said he yelled, “What do you want from me?” He received no response.

“I thought, ‘This is it, I’ve had enough,’” Sargent said, explaining why he pulled the AR-15-style assault rifle from his vehicle. Sargent tried to say he thought this was a rational decision because he had been doing drugs, but Ferentino objected and the judge agreed.

Sargent later talked about firing off a few rounds, the ones that ultimately lodged themselves into the garage doors of the Walmart auto center. He said he was firing the shots to scare people away, not to kill anyone.

“I didn’t aim at anything specific,” he said.

Sargent said his girlfriend came to his car at that point, and they began to have a conversation.

“That’s when my car was riddled with bullets,” he said.

Sargent said he began firing, trying to provide cover for his girlfriend so she could reach a safe location.

Sargent testified he never saw police, never heard the police identify themselves, never saw vehicles driving toward him and never used the rifle’s scope to take aim at officers.

In fact, he said he did not realize he was being fired upon until he came face to face with Wilkes-Barre City Police Officer Alan Gribble.

“I was trying to raise my hand up to say, ‘Wait, wait,’” Sargent said in the moments before Gribble fired at him with a shotgun.

‘Lying about that, too?’

In his fiery cross-examination of Sargent, Ferentino opened by saying the defendant was “the luckiest shot (he’s) ever seen in (his) career,” a statement that was immediately objected to by defense attorney Joseph Yeager on the grounds of being argumentative, which Lupas sustained.

Ferentino broke down the testimony from officers Wednesday, asking Sargent repeatedly if each of them was lying.

“Did you say, ‘F—- you, pigs’?” Ferentino asked.

“I don’t speak like that,” Sargent said.

“They’re lying about that, too?” Ferentino returned.

“They gotta be,” Sargent said.

He would only agree that he opened fire and that he was shot, maintaining he never saw police until he was shot by Gribble.

Earlier, State Police Cpl. Joseph Gober testified as a firearms expert, demonstrating for the jury how Sargent’s rifle worked. Since it was a semi-automatic weapon, the trigger has to pulled for each shot fired and could not fire in bursts by holding the trigger down.

Both sides rested Thursday afternoon.

Sargent was returned to the Luzerne County Correctional Facility.

Sargent
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By Patrick Kernan

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Reach Patrick Kernan at 570-991-6386 or on Twitter @PatKernan