VAN BUREN - A Franklin County woman on trial for first-degree murder in Crawford County Circuit Court said Tuesday that she didn’t remember shooting an Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department worker at an Interstate 40 rest stop in Van Buren last year.

Patricia McClure-Hajek, 59, who is charged with shooting state Highway Department worker Sharren Richards, 54, on May 1, 2012, told the jury of nine women and three men the last thing she remembered that morning was telling someone who tapped on her window at the rest stop that she was hurt and couldn’t move.

A truck driver from Texas who testified last week said Richards was tapping on McClure-Hajek’s window, apparently to try to get her to move her 2007 Chevrolet pickup because it was blocking the way back onto the highway for tractor-trailers parked at the rest stop. Richards was emptying trash barrels at the rest stop about 6 a.m., the truck driver said.

But McClure-Hajek said she couldn’t hear what the person tapping on her window was saying. She said she was dazed from accidentally shooting herself in the leg, and her four dogs in the pickup were barking at the person outside.

She said she shot herself sometime during the night when one of her dogs jumped on her, and she thought she passed out for a time.

The truck driver said McClure-Hajek shot at Richards twice. Police recovered McClure-Hajek’s Ruger single-action .22-caliber six-shooter that she surrendered at the scene. One bullet struck Richards in the neck and severed the artery just under her collarbone, a state medical examiner testified. She bled to death in seconds.

McClure-Hajek also said Tuesday that she didn’t remember being interviewed less than three hours after the shooting by Arkansas State Police Lt. Steve Coppinger, whose recorded interview of McClure-Hajek was played for the jury last week.

In the interview, McClure-Hajek said she shot Richards because she feared Richards was someone she thought was after her.

She said Tuesday that she was at the rest stop because her pickup was low on gasoline, she had no money and hoped that parking in the middle of the rest stop roadway would attract a patrolling police officer who would then check on and help her.

She had set off from her rural Franklin County home in the evening after she said she was threatened by three men in a car as she went to close the gate on her property. She said one yelled at her that if she did that again, they would beat her.

While saying she didn’t know to what the man referred, she said she tried to chase down the car and get some identification of the vehicle or its destination so she could make a report to the sheriff.

She said she had been harassed by others who yelled things to her, spun their tires outside her property, sneaked onto her property at night and even left a threatening note in her portable toilet.

McClure-Hajek said she couldn’t locate the car and got lost on the back roads of the county. She said the car she believed was occupied by the men began to follow her, so she tried to drive to the sheriff’s office.

She said she remembered the state police office was in Fort Smith and decided to drive there. As she approached the interstate, she said, a car swerved in front of her and, turning to avoid a collision, she drove onto the off ramp of the interstate at Mulberry.

She said she drove onto the eastbound lanes going west and had to cross the median to get into the proper lane. She damaged the front end of her pickup driving through the median and, according to her statement to Coppinger, remembered going airborne.

She said she realized at one point that she had passed the state police station, was low on gas and was about to drive into Oklahoma, so she turned around and pulled in to the rest stop.

McClure-Hajek’s attorney is asserting innocence because of mental disease or defect, a burden the defense must prove.

Fort Smith psychologist Patricia Walz testified for the defense Tuesday that McClure-Hajek suffered from a mental disease or defect at the time of the shooting - a personality disorder. She said McClure-Hajek perceived threats from the people who she said harassed and threatened her, but no threat existed. She had delusions that people were after her and was distrustful of people, the psychologist said.

She said McClure-Hajek’s stated plans to build her own home on her property, to raise crops and to work in Florida part time were irrational.

The prosecution stated in court records that it planned to call as a rebuttal witness Arkansas State Hospital psychologist Paul Deyoub who, like Walz, examined and evaluated McClure-Hajek’s mental state at the time of the shooting.

In a report he filed in the case, Deyoub concluded that McClure-Hajek suffered from a personality disorder but that a personality disorder was not a mental illness.

Court officials hoped to conclude the trial Tuesday, but the results were not available because of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s early deadline prompted by inclement weather.

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/11/2013