Prosecutor: St. Paul driver killed man over traffic dispute

When a dark-colored Toyota sped around a corner, nearly hitting him and his girlfriend, Jeffrey T. Elling yelled, "Slow down!"
Moments later, he lay dead of a gunshot wound on the front steps of his St. Paul home.
The Toyota's driver, 19-year-old Aloeng Kelly Vang, went on trial Monday, charged with first-degree premeditated murder and second-degree intentional murder in the Sept. 1 shooting.
He doesn't dispute that he shot and killed Elling, defense attorney Barbara Deneen said Monday. But he denies he planned the killing or intended to end Elling's life.
Aloeng Vang waived his right to a jury trial in Ramsey County District Court; Judge Diane Alshouse will hear the evidence and decide the verdict.
The defendant retaliated against Elling, 50, because he believed he had been "disrespected," prosecutor Adam Petras said in his opening statement.
The state's first witness, Elling's girlfriend, testified that the two of them were smoking cigarettes on the porch of their home in the 1400 block of York Avenue in St. Paul.
It was about 1:45 a.m. and the neighborhood was quiet, said Debra Heintz, 57. They saw a motion-sensor light turn on at a house across the street and noticed an animal -- a raccoon, Heintz thought -- near the house.
"I just know they can do some damage," she said. She and Elling, 50, crossed the street to scare it away.
Before they reached the other curb, Heintz heard a loud car coming north on Birmingham Street, the nearest cross street, she said.
The car, a dark Toyota, turned right at York Avenue. "It was coming toward me and Jeff ... I hollered, 'Jeff!' " Heintz said.
As the car went by, Elling yelled, "Slow down!" Heintz testified.
The vehicle pulled into the driveway of another house up the block and the driver got out. He began to walk toward the pair, and Elling approached him, Heintz said.
"The guy said something that must have made Jeff mad because Jeff went up and poked him in the shoulder and the guy just fell on his butt," Heintz said. She suspected the driver had been drinking.
They exchanged a few words that Heintz couldn't understand. Elling then returned, saying something like, "I can't believe he almost ran us over," she said.
They returned to sitting on the steps. She and Elling were waiting up for Elling's brother to call; he had left their home around midnight in a newly repaired truck and lived about two hours away, she said.
A few minutes later, a woman approached from the house the driver had entered. Elling went out to the street to meet her. She wanted to know "what his issue with the defendant was," Petras said in his opening statement. Elling explained he was upset about the man's reckless driving. The woman then left, Heintz said.
Soon after that, they saw the same car drive by and believed the man was leaving the area.
Elling and Heintz eventually went inside. She sat at the kitchen table while he fixed himself some leftovers and ate at the counter, Heintz said.
The doorbell rang.
"Jeff put his food down," she said, fighting back tears. "I was watching him and he walked to the door. He answered the door and there were two gunfires that I saw, and it was really loud, and Jeff fell."
Heintz feared she might be next.
"I crawled on all fours from the table ... to the front door," she said. "Jeff was laying there and I touched his leg because it was laying in(side) the house. I said, 'Say something! Say something!' and there was nothing."
She crawled back to the kitchen to grab her phone from the counter and dialed 911.
"My boyfriend just got shot!" she told the dispatcher. "Oh God, please don't make him be dead."
Defense attorney Evan Tsai asked how much Heintz and Elling had been drinking that night before the shooting. The judge ruled that Elling's alcohol consumption was irrelevant.
Did Elling "poke" the defendant with "quite a bit of force"? he asked. Heintz said no. In response to another question, Heintz said Aloeng Vang stood about a foot shorter than Elling, who was 6 feet, 1 inch tall.
He questioned whether Heintz could see the gun flashes from her vantage point.
St. Paul police officer Steven Jaworski, the first responder at the scene, said that he responded about 3 a.m. and that police found two shell casings at the end of the driveway. When Heintz was moving some of her belongings out of the house 10 days later, she spotted a shell under her desk in the living room, not far from the front door.
Jaworski said he found Elling lying halfway off the front step -- the upper part of his body over the side in the landscaping. His shirt was soaked at the neck with blood. One leg lay on the step, the other inside the storm door.
"It appeared to be immediate," Jaworski said of Elling's death. "It looked like he just dropped right where he was hit."
Elling was her partner and best friend, Heintz said. They had met at a Halloween party six years earlier and moved into the York Avenue house together three years before the slaying.