Man to claim self-defense in killing officer

By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer

A man accused of murdering a police officer attempting to arrest him March 4 at a Kapolei ice cream parlor plans to claim self-defense when his trial begins in December, his lawyer said yesterday.

Shane Mark, top, was charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death of police detective Glen Gaspar. Advertiser library photos

Debra Loy, a state deputy public defender who is representing Mark, told Circuit Judge Karen Ahn that Mark also will claim that he was acting in self-defense in the Feb. 1 incident and people were threatening him in relation to the 'Aiea shooting.

In that case, Marks is accused of shooting a man in a leg in the parking lot of a church.

"By the time people came and grabbed him March 4, (Mark) thought they were agents of the people who had been threatening him," Loy said.

Police have said that Mark's former girlfriend, the mother of his daughter, had asked him to meet her at the Baskin Robbins store at Kapolei and that a struggle with Mark ensued as Gaspar and several other officers approached Mark to arrest him.

Gaspar, 40, was shot twice in the chest and once in the hip, and died a short time later.

Loy yesterday asked Ahn to bar the prosecution from using as evidence many of the items that were collected the day of the shooting or seized the next day.

Among the items Loy argued the prosecution should not be allowed to use are the gun that was taken from the floor of the ice cream store after the shooting and the blood-stained clothes that hospital workers at St. Francis Medical Center-West removed from Mark while he was being treated there.

She also wants to exclude from the trial the backpack Mark carried into the store and two shell casings that were found in the car that Mark drove to the shopping center on the morning of the shooting.

Loy said the gun and Mark's clothing were seized by police without a warrant. And while a search warrant was obtained to collect a blood sample from Mark and to search his backpack and car, substantially fewer items were recovered from the car and backpack than were listed in documents given to the judge who issued the search warrant, Loy said.

She said police had no basis to obtain a search warrant to have blood drawn from Mark or to have it tested.

But city Deputy Prosecutor Christopher Van Marter described the collection of evidence as "a textbook case of how it ought to be done." Van Marter said no warrant was needed to seize the gun after Gaspar was killed and that police "opened the chamber" to remove any bullets that might have been in there so that the gun would not injure anyone else.

Police didn't need a search warrant to seize Mark's clothes at the hospital because they were incidental to his being arrested on a homicide charge, Van Marter said.

Mark was taken first to the Kapolei police station and then to St. Francis West after he became "unresponsive."

Ahn took the matter under advisement and said she will rule at a later date.

Reach David Waite at dwaite@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8030.