Neighbor testifies in Onalaska murder trial

The landlord and neighbor of Ronald A. Brady said the 60-year-old appeared to be a "little peeved" hours before he shot and killed Thomas McKenzie at his Onalaska home the night of April 19, 2010.

"He said he’d been burglarized again, and he thought he might spend the night in the house that night," Jack Tipping testified Wednesday in Brady’s murder trial in Lewis County Superior Court.

In a taped statement made the following day with a sheriff’s detective, Brady said he had been working on a computer at home when he saw a truck turn off State Route 508 and enter his driveway at about 9 p.m. So he grabbed his .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle and made his way to the garage, where he said tools and machinery were moved around earlier in the day and a large garage door had been left propped ajar.

"I wait there to see if, well, what’s going to happen here," Brady said on the recording prosecutors played for the jury. "I hear a loud knocking on door No. 1, that’s the door, side door into the garage."

Moments later Brady tripped on something in the darkness.

"I think I hear the man’s voice say something about the cops being on the way," Brady said. "So I think I’ll open the garage door and shoot out the tires."

Two or three shots are fired, Brady said, but two flashlights remain pointed at him: Thomas McKenzie is at the north corner of the garage and Joanna McKenzie is behind the McKenzies’ 1970s Ford truck.

"I had no idea if they were armed or not, methheads or whatever," Brady said in the tape recording. "And I took the shots at them."

Crouching and shooting from his hip, Brady said he fired maybe three times at Thomas McKenzie, who fell dead just yards away from his wife.

"She said ‘You killed my husband,’ and she’s still pointing the flashlight at me," Brady said.

Brady called 911 on his cellphone.

Later in the recording, Sheriff’s Detective Bruce Kimsey asked Brady why he felt the need to shoot at Thomas McKenzie.

"I have no idea," he said. "I had already shot at the truck tires, and they were still pointing flashlights at me."

Brady said nothing to the McKenzies before and during the shooting, he said, and they said nothing to him.

"I’m not taking any chances," he added.

Investigators found four spent casings in the area of the shooting.

Brady has contended that he shot at the McKenzies in self-defense, but the prosecution contends he was reckless and intent on shooting any burglars that came to his home that night.

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