911 tape played

Her voice shaking, Misty Witherspoon told a 911 operator, “You’ve got to get here.”

The tape from Witherspoon’s 911 call on Sept. 13, 2005, was the opening evidence in the state’s case against the Mooresville woman charged with first-degree murder.

Misty Witherspoon is accused of shooting her husband Quinn, an off-duty Concord police officer, to death in their Mooresville home.

She is being tried in Iredell County Superior Court. Jury selection began in the case Tuesday, with opening statements presented Thursday afternoon.

The shooting, Witherspoon’s attorney Andrew Jennings said in his opening statement, was a failed suicide attempt by his client. He said the shooting was accidental.

The state began its case Friday morning with testimony by Paul Webster, the telecommunicator with Iredell County Emergency Communications (ECOM) who took the 911 call on Sept. 13, 2005.

After that opening remark to Webster, Witherspoon offered an explanation for how the shooting happened.

“I was bringing my husband his gun and it shot,” she said on the tape. When asked where she shot him, she replied, “In the head. Oh God, it’s bad.”

During the short call, Witherspoon can be heard crying. “I don’t believe this,” she said. “Oh God.”

Jennings questioned Webster about Witherspoon’s first statement. “The first thing Misty tells you is ‘You’ve got to get her,’ ” he asked.

Webster said yes.

This was offered to counter Assistant District Attorney Alan Martin’s statement to the jury Thursday that her first words were not asking for help but offering an explanation of the shooting.

Also Friday, the first of what is expected to be several Mooresville police officers took the stand.
Corey Barnette, who no longer works for the MPD, was the first officer on the scene that day.

Barnette testified that he didn’t hear anything as he approached the house.

He said he entered the house and found Misty Witherspoon in the living room, standing next to the couch where her husband was laying face down.

Barnette said he noticed a child’s book, a pair of white tennis shoes, a cordless phone with blood stains and a 40-caliber handgun on the floor near the couch.

He testified that Witherspoon told him she had dropped her husband’s gun in the bathroom and was bringing it to him to check out.

Her husband had been napping on the couch as he was shot.

Barnette said that within a few minutes, Quinn Witherspoon’s parents, who lived next door, arrived, and he then cleared them out of the house.

He testified that one of the couple’s toddler-age twins came out from the back of the house, and “put his hand on his daddy’s shoulder.”

Barnette said he grabbed the child and took him outside, handing him to someone in the yard.

Knowing Witherspoon had twins, Barnette said, he figured the girl was also in the house. She was still in her bed asleep, and Barnette and a paramedic took her outside.

As Barnette testified, the state showed several photos of the house and crime scene to the eight-woman, four-man jury.

When the pictures of the couch containing her husband’s body were shown, Witherspoon looked down at the defense table.

Trooper Jason Fleming of the North Carolina Highway Patrol, a friend of Quinn Witherspoon’s since childhood, testified about his conversation with Misty Witherspoon on Sept. 13, 2005.

He said she was sitting in the front yard when he arrived.

Witherspoon, he said, told him two or three times that she slipped on a book and the gun went off.

In response to questioning from the state, Fleming said he found that unusual. “It was verbatim. Word for word. She never added anything or took anything away,” he said.

Fleming also testified that the Witherspoon marriage appeared to be a good one. He said he never witnessed any friction between the couple.

Other witnesses on the first day of testimony included paramedics Linden Walker and Wes Thompson, who responded to the scene on Sept. 13, 2005, and medical examiner Tony Tudor.

Tudor testified that a cartridge rolled out as Witherspoon’s body was removed from the couch, and a projectile was found embedded in the pillow Quinn Witherspoon had his arms wrapped around as he slept.

Cross-examination of Tudor will begin Monday morning when court convenes at 9:30 a.m.