LOGAN COUNTY: Wife, son tell court man shot boyfriend

— Heather Balasco couldn't take in the reality of the scene of her estranged husband standing over her lover and pumping bullets into his head, she told a Logan County Circuit Court jury Friday.

Balasco was the first witness called in the firstdegree murder trial of Robert James, 61, charged with gunning down Tony Rice, 40, in the parking lot of the Paris Wal-Mart on Aug. 8, 2008.

"I had still to actually believe what I was seeing," she said as she recounted the day Rice was shot.

She said she and Rice, with whom she was romantically involved since that June, were leaving the store at 4 p.m., the end of the shift they both worked.

The two walked to their vehicles parked facing each other in the employee parking lot west of the store. Because it was August, they opened the doors to their vehicles and stood talking while the interiors cooled.

That's when James, who had been waiting in another section of the parking lot, pulled up and blocked Rice's pickup in its parking space, she testified.

Balasco said she thought James had driven up to drop off their son Michael, then 13. She began walking toward James' pickup when she heard a loud noise.

She didn't see the gun at first, she said, but saw Rice take off running with James chasing him and shooting. She saw Rice fall and James stand over him and fire three more shots into Rice's head.

She recalled James walking past her and telling her, "Now you can go home and take care of Michael."

Michael, James' adopted son, also testified Friday. He said James drove home after the shooting and put the gun in a box and told him that he had shot Rice. Then James got a soda from the kitchen and sat outside on the porch swing until police arrived, Michael told jurors.

Later, Logan County sheriff 's investigator Ray Gack testified James told him that he went to Wal-Mart to get some bread when he saw Rice and his wife together in the parking lot.

"He said he just lost it," Gack said.

Testimony from other state witnesses showed James had been brooding over his wife'sinfidelity months before the shooting.

Rice's ex-wives Tina Zimmer and Sandra Rice, both of Paris, testified that James contacted them several times as early as May 2008 about whether Rice had cheated on them during their marriages and whether they knew he was having an affair with his wife.

Both said they didn't want to talk to James.

"This case is about jealousy and anger. It's pretty simple," deputy prosecutor John Riedel told jurors in his opening statement.

That James apparently dwelled on the affair and contacted Rice's ex-wives, Riedel said, were indications he didn't act on impulse or in the heat of passion.

"On August 8, he went to Wal-Mart with the intent to kill Tony Rice, and that's what he did," Riedel said.

One of James' attorneys, John Irwin of Morrilton, told jurors that Rice's killing did not begin with James pulling the trigger but with the violation of marriage vows by Balasco and Rice.

Irwin claimed that the affair between Rice and Balasco began in early 2008 and they became more open about it as time went on.

He asked jurors not to absolve James for killing Rice but to understand how James could have become so emotionally distraught that he could resort to violence.

Testimony is scheduled to resume at 1 p.m. Monday.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11, 12 on 09/26/2009

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