Officer's shooting recounted as Mark trial opens

By Mike Gordon and David Waite
Advertiser Staff Writers

Some of the last moments of a slain police officer's life, caught on videotape, were shown to a packed courtroom today during opening arguments in the trial of Shane Mark, who is accused of killing the officer.

Shane Mark was in court today to face trial on charges that he shot police officer Glen Gaspar to death last March at a Kapolei ice cream shop. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Gaspar and five other officers had gone to the store to arrest Mark on two unrelated attempted-murder warrants for a shooting in February.

City Deputy Prosecutor Christopher Van Marter described the Kapolei meeting in painstaking detail, calling the defendant "an armed fugitive" who had come to the store with a loaded .22-caliber revolver in his pants pocket.

"He realized he was cornered," Van Marter said. "He tried to literally shoot his way out of the arrest rather than be arrested."

The jury was told Mark had gone to the store to meet former girlfriend Melissa Sennett, the mother of Mark's 10-year-old daughter Shansy. Sennett, who lives in Kansas, was in Hawai'i on vacation.

At a reunion with Mark, she learned he was a fugitive. After Mark arranged the Baskin-Robbins meeting March 4, Sennett called CrimeStoppers and told police when and where they would see each other, Van Marter said.

Her boyfriend was there to videotape the meeting, and those images were flashed onto a screen for the jury.

"He's trying to record Shansy's last contact with her biological father before they leave for the Mainland, and the defendant gets arrested for these serious crimes," Van Marter said.

The images showed Shansy, her head resting on a restaurant table, and Mark behind her as he reaches into his right pocket. Van Marter said the gun was in that pocket.

The images also showed Officers Gaspar and Calvin Sung reaching forward to grab Mark. They had identified themselves as police and shown Mark their badges, Van Marter said, but Mark responded by saying, "Shut up."

The jury did not see the gun fire at Gaspar, but Van Marter spared no detail about that moment.

As Gaspar and Sung scuffled with an increasingly violent Mark, reaching for the weapon in the defendant's hand, shots were fired, Van Marter said.

"He puts the barrel of the gun into Officer Glen Gaspar's chest and he pulls the trigger," Van Marter said.

The first shot punctured Gaspar's liver, stomach and pancreas and lodged in his spine, Van Marter told the jury. A second shot pierced his heart and liver before lodging near the first bullet. A third shot slammed into his ammunition belt.

Gaspar looked at his fellow officers.

"He says, 'I'm shot,' " Van Marter recounted. "Those were his last words, because in a couple of seconds, he loses consciousness."

Members of Gaspar's family were in the courtroom, including his brother, Greig, and his parents, Evangeline and Gilbert Sr.

"Without everyone's support over the past few months, we would have been overcome by grief and sadness," Greig Gaspar said in a written statement issued to reporters. "This past Thanksgiving was extremely difficult. We were surrounded by family, yet no matter where I looked in the room, Glen was missing."

The family hopes Mark will be convicted and "spend the rest of his life behind bars," Gaspar said.

Mark's trial is expected to last up to two weeks, with the prosecution taking about a week to 10 days and calling as many as 40 witnesses.

State Deputy Public Defender Debra Loy has indicated that Mark will not dispute that he shot Gaspar, 40, but will argue that he was acting in self-defense, believing that Gaspar and other plainclothes officers who approached him without identifying themselves were the same men, or acting on behalf of the men, involved in a Feb. 1 shooting.

Mark allegedly had traded crystal methamphetamine for a video surveillance camera that he later found to be defective and had gone to the parking lot of the First Assembly of God church on Moanalua Road to confront the men about the camera.

Mark is accused of shooting at two men there, resulting in attempted-murder charges.

Mark pleaded guilty Nov. 7 to drug and weapons charges stemming from both the Gaspar shooting and church parking lot incidents.

While the prosecution had hoped to argue that Mark was under the influence of crystal meth when Gaspar was shot, Ahn ruled previously that test results of a blood sample taken from Mark soon after the Gaspar shooting may not be used as evidence.