Prosecution Rests in Ranger Trial

ROCKVILLE — An Army Ranger accused of killing his roommate, a fellow Ranger, told police he loaded the gun used in the shooting but warned his friend it was loaded.

Prosecutors rested their case Tuesday in the trial of Sgt. Gary J. Smith after they played the conclusion of a videotaped police interview in which Smith discusses the events surrounding the death of Spc. Michael A. McQueen II at their Gaithersburg apartment in September 2006.

Smith changed his account several times during the interview, but maintained his innocence throughout. Even after settling on a single account, in which he said McQueen fatally shot himself while Smith was in the bathroom, Smith continued to introduce new details about his actions in the minutes before McQueen's death.

More than six hours into the interview, Smith, 25, tells Montgomery County homicide detective James Drewry for the first time that he loaded the handgun that killed McQueen while sitting in his car before he brought the gun up to their apartment.

"I swear I'm telling the truth," Smith said.

"You've done that before," Drewry responded.

Smith also wavers when describing how he carried the gun upstairs, twice saying that he put it in his pants pocket only to correct himself and say he wrapped it in a shirt.

According to Smith, he showed the gun to McQueen, 22, who was sitting in a chair watching TV, and warned him it was loaded. Smith said he then went to the bathroom, and when he emerged 10 or 15 minutes later, he heard the shot and saw blood flowing from McQueen's head as he stepped back into the living room.

After checking McQueen's pulse to confirm that he was dead and spending a few minutes in what he called "panic mode," Smith told the detectives that he took the gun, a .38-caliber revolver, and threw it in a nearby lake before returning to the apartment and calling 911. His attorney, Andrew Jezic, has argued that Smith did not want his Ranger buddy to be thought of as a suicide victim.

Smith told the detectives that he was worried because the gun was his, because he and McQueen had been drinking and smoking marijuana, and because no one else was present when McQueen died.

Prosecutors have seized on Smith's conflicting statements and forensic evidence — including blood spatter on the floor next to McQueen and blood on Smith's hands, pants and shoe — as proof that Smith killed his roommate.

A blood-spatter expert for the state, William T. Vosburgh, testified last week that he found the outlines of a shoe and a human hand in the pool of blood next to McQueen.

But Herbert MacDonell, director of the Laboratory for Forensic Science in Corning, N.Y., disputed Vosburgh's conclusions Tuesday, saying a void in the bloodstain was the wrong shape to have been created by the sneaker Smith was wearing when McQueen died.

While there was blood on Smith's shoe, MacDonell testified there wasn't enough blood on it for it to have been in the path of gushing blood immediately after the gunshot.

McQueen's father, Mike McQueen, is the New Orleans bureau chief for The Associated Press.

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