COVINGTON, La. (AP) — Jurors heard a 911 recording of a man’s threats and a woman’s pleas for her life, then convicted the man of attempted manslaughter and endangering her two children during a domestic abuse incident, authorities in Louisiana said.
The call had gone through when Wade Ostarly, 39, of Covington, grabbed and pocketed the woman’s phone early Aug. 26, 2019, District Attorney Warren Montgomery said in a news release Friday.
Jurors heard recordings of Ostarly repeatedly threatening to kill the woman while she begged him to let her live, he said.
The jury convicted Ostarly on Thursday of attempted manslaughter, two counts of domestic abuse aggravated assault with child endangerment and one count each of illegal use of a weapon during a crime of violence and of possessing a firearm after being convicted of domestic abuse battery.
Montgomery said Ostarly kicked in the woman’s door around midnight while she and the children were sleeping. The children escaped, running through a field and a creek to a grandparent’s home.
Ostarly “knew where the victim kept her firearm and grabbed it” the news release said. The gun went off, and although she was not hit by ammunition, “gravel, debris and shrapnel tore into the victim’s shoulder,” the statement said.
The woman tried to barricade herself in the house but Ostarly got in, carrying a shovel. During a fight for the shovel, she was pushed into the microwave, cutting her head.
She grabbed the home phone, dialed 911 and put it down.
When deputies arrived, Ostarly was walking in the area and “the home showed obvious signs that there had been a struggle.”
Ostarly testified that he had only meant to scare the woman with the gun, and it went off when he dropped it because his dog had bitten him, the news release said. It said his hand was not injured.
The woman got out through a bedroom window, hid in the grass until she thought she heard Ostarly’s car, then ran into a neighbor’s unlocked house. Both the neighbor and the grandparent had also called 911, Montgomery said.
District Judge William Burris scheduled sentencing for March 7. The news release did not mention possible sentences.
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