Head Shot Read Free

kitchen’s stained linoleum. Tony Youso, a remaining spectator, began losing interest. The argument could and would continue without him. As he left the kitchen for the living room, where Christopher St. Pierre was sleeping on the couch, the angry and humiliated Paul St. Pierre struggled to his feet, then directed dire threats toward his former childhood playmate, Andrew Webb. He could, he insisted, do whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted, and Andrew Webb couldn’t stop him.
    â€œWhat are you going to do, Paul, shoot me?” asked Webb. Paul St. Pierre yanked out his .45, pointed it directly at Webb, and jerked the trigger.
    â€œThe bullet went right through me,” Webb recalled, “and I just stood there in shock. Then I fell on the floor and blacked out. I do remember Kevin Wiggins saying he was going to take me to the hospital. He really saved my life.”
    â€œI heard the gunshot,” stated Tony Youso, “I turned back around to see what happened. Andrew was all bent over, and down, and leaning against the refrigerator.”
    â€œWhy, Paul? Why?” Webb asked before he collapsed, according to Youso. Paul St. Pierre hastily apologized. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, then ran off to hide the gun. Tony Youso rushed to Webb’s side, saw the damage, and ran to awaken St. Pierre’s younger brother, Chris.
    â€œPaul shot Andrew,” he shouted, “We’ve got to call an ambulance!” Chris St. Pierre got up and quickly looked in the kitchen. Tony wasn’t kidding.
    While the two ran from the house to summon aid, Kevin Wiggins helped Webb up off the floor, out to the alley, and toward the parked cars. It was in the alley that Paul St. Pierre, having stashed his weapon, caught up with them.
    Seeing his assailant, the wounded Webb feared for his life. “I was afraid that he was going to kill me and bury me out in the woods. He looked like he was going to shoot me again.” To convince St. Pierre that another bullet was unnecessary, Webb utilized his best reasoning and oratory skills. “I’m dead, Paul,” he shouted, “I’m dead!” Before Paul St. Pierre could agree or differ, Officers Boik and Lowry arrived. As their investigation began, Jim Mullins, distinctive in his tattered, bloodstained blue plaid shirt, came careening around the corner, his arms flailing wildly.
    Authorities were never quite able to fit Mullins into the chronology of the morning’s events. “We know he’s the one who summoned the police by running over to the tavern,” said Yerbury, “but he was so highly intoxicated and combative that he was impossible to communicate with. I tried to interview him, and at times he would tell me that Paul St. Pierre shot Andrew; then in the next breath he would say that he didn’t want to tell us anything because he was afraid of what Paul St. Pierre would do to him if he talked.”
    Because Mullins, a transient with no permanent address, continually insisted that he was leaving for Oregon the minute police were done talking to him, police booked him into the Pierce County Jail on a RCW charge—witness to a violent crime.
    Paul St. Pierre became even more violent when placed under arrest. Boik and Lowry forcibly restrained him, and Sergeant Justice of the Tacoma Police took a residue test. “We then set up the breathalyzer machine,” recalled Boik, “but St. Pierre refused several times, and we were never able to get a reading.”
    While talking to Officer Boik, Paul St. Pierre mentioned that “maybe it was self-defense.” When asked if he really did shoot Webb in self-defense, St. Pierre didn’t give a direct answer. “Maybe he had a gun, too,” he said, as if it were a remote possibility.
    Andrew Webb’s older brother, Wesley, unaware of the current crisis, arrived on the scene just as the ambulance sped away. Simply intending a friendly