Paul Welle testified Tuesday that he was just looking to have fun in a Proctor bar by dancing and trying to introduce some young women to a shy friend when Dale Anderson told him to leave the women alone because he was their father, he was a Vietnam vet, he killed people and he was going to destroy him.
Welle said he tried to make peace with Anderson, who wasn't really related to the women but thought Welle was bothering them.
After arguing in the Powerhouse Bar, Welle said Anderson told him, "Let's go outside."
"I said, 'Lead the way,''' Welle testified.
Welle said he thought Anderson just wanted to talk to him. He said he wanted to explain that he wasn't harassing anybody.
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"Right when I got outside he stepped on my foot and starts swinging," Welle testified. "He hit me on the shoulder and he hit me on the rib cage. ... Right when he hit my side that's when I threw a punch. ... I can't tell you if my punch knocked him down or he was drunk and fell down."
Welle, 33, who said he is a self-employed certified personal trainer from St. Michael, Minn., is on trial in State District Court in Duluth on charges of second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter.
Anderson, 60, a Duluth native living in Blaine, died of a brain hemorrhage on Nov. 9, three days after he was struck by Welle, falling on a concrete slab and landing on the back of his head.
Before St. Louis County prosecutor Rebekka Stumme could raise Welle's prior criminal record in an attempt to impeach his credibility, defense attorney Richard Holmstrom got it out of the way as soon as Welle took the stand. Holmstrom had his client admit to jurors that he had convictions for theft by check, aiding and abetting a forged check and third-degree assault. Jurors learned through earlier testimony that Welle has convictions in connection with assaults on two other men in separate cases.
Regarding the previous cases, Welle told jurors that he punched a man resulting in the third-degree assault conviction and he had no excuse. In another case where he punched a man in the face, Welle said, "It was totally my fault, 100 percent." In the third case in which he assaulted a man, he said he was acting in self-defense when the man came after him with a raised beer bottle.
Gabrielle Welle, 39, a registered nurse, testified that she told her husband that he should call police if the other man hit him first, because it was self-defense. However, she admitted that she initially lied when she told police that she was in a vehicle at the bar waiting to pick up her husband and said she saw the other man swing first at her husband. Paul Welle testified that when his wife asked him what she could do for him he told her she could lie for him.
"The fact is that you put out a pretty elaborate lie, didn't you?" Stumme asked the defendant.
"Yes, I did,'' he said.
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Gabrielle Welle later called police and reported that she wasn't there when the incident happened. Her husband fled the scene after the incident, called his wife, who was sleeping in a downtown Duluth hotel, and she picked him up in another part of Proctor.
Stumme called three rebuttal witnesses to testify about Anderson's character.
Father Thomas McDonough, a Roman Catholic priest from St. Paul, testified that Anderson was "very kind and generous," and a "very peaceful person." The priest said that Anderson once let him live in his home for a year. "He was just a vivacious, nice guy," McDonough said.
Donald Burcar of Hermantown testified that Anderson "was probably the most peaceful person I ever met in my life. I've never seen him angry or violent."
Timothy Zebott, a military veteran from Duluth, said Anderson was proud of his military experience as a Vietnam veteran, but he never heard him brag about killing anyone, just the opposite. Zebott said Anderson was ashamed of the killing that went on in Vietnam.
In his cross-examination, Holmstrom asked the character witnesses if they ever saw Anderson when he had 16 drinks in his system, a blood-alcohol concentration of .20, while dancing with and buying drinks for women who weren't his wife when another man entered the picture. The character witnesses said they had never seen their late friend that way.
This morning, Judge Mark Munger will read jurors his instructions on the law they should follow in deciding the case and St. Louis County prosecutor Rebekka Stumme and defense attorney Richard Holmstrom will then make their closing arguments before the case goes to the jury. Munger instructed jurors to be prepared to spend the night in a hotel if they don't reach a verdict by 9:30 p.m. today.
