Girlfriend of Montana man accused of shooting teen recants statement

By Lori Grannis MISSOULA, Mont. (Reuters) - The live-in girlfriend of a Montana man accused of deliberate homicide in the shooting death of a German exchange student took the stand in his trial on Friday and recanted an earlier statement that she heard the victim beg for his life. Markus Kaarma, a 29-year-old U.S. Forest Service firefighter, fired his shotgun into his darkened garage in Missoula, Montana after midnight on April 27, killing 17-year-old Diren Dede, a high school student from Hamburg, Germany, police say. Defense lawyers argue that Kaarma was acting to protect his family, in a case that is expected to test Montana's so-called "Castle Doctrine" self-defense law that allows deadly force against a home invasion if a person reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent an assault. According to prosecutors, Kaarma's girlfriend, Janelle Pflager, told police that she heard Dede shout: "No, no. No, please!" as her husband chambered four shells in the Mossberg shotgun. That statement had been key to the prosecution case because it seemed to suggest that Dede did not pose a threat to Kaarma before he opened fire. But after being called to the witness stand by Missoula County prosecutors on Friday, Pflager denied hearing Dede make that statement, saying she was “out of her mind traumatized” while being interviewed by police. "Sometimes if I’m in a state of mind where I feel traumatized or confused, if someone suggests something to me I may just agree – to just be agreeable,” Pflager said, adding that law enforcement and 9-1-1 operator were asking her questions “like a battering ram.” On the night of the shooting in April, Dede and an Ecuadorian exchange student, Robby Pazmino, approached Kaarma's open garage. Dede entered, while Pazmino remained on the street, Pazmino told police in an affidavit. Alerted to the teenager's presence by motion sensors and a video monitor, Kaarma walked outside his house and fired four shotgun blasts into the garage, killing Dede, according to prosecutors. German officials have expressed outrage at the killing, and Dede’s father suggested to a German news agency that U.S. gun culture was partly to blame for his son's death. A debate over stand-your-ground-type laws has raged in the United States and elsewhere since the 2012 shooting death of unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, who was acquitted of murder last year. (Reporting by Lori Grannis; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Andrew Hay)