When Scott Klund fired 24 rounds with an assault rifle through his bathroom door last spring, he was trying to “neutralize a threat,” he said.
On the other side of the door was a homeless man with a knife who had come back to Klund’s Lowertown apartment along with a woman in the early morning hours of May 7. The former U.S. Marine had just met the two about 15 minutes earlier outside a SuperAmerica, where he had stopped to grab chips after closing down the Bulldog bar in St. Paul.
After a brief conversation, they walked Klund home to his apartment building on Fifth Street and eventually came inside his unit, he said. Soon after, Charlotte Rawls asked to use his bathroom while her friend, Ray Gruer, conversed with Klund in his living room, where Klund’s rifle was sitting nearby. He had left it there after attaching a new part to the firearm, he said.
Rawls never returned, Klund said, causing him to temporarily forget about her. Then Gruer asked to use the bathroom.
That’s when the evening took a turn.
That’s part of the account Klund gave from the witness stand Thursday in Ramsey County District Court during hours of questioning by his defense team and the prosecution. The 30-year-old veteran and Duluth, Minn., native is on trial for killing Rawls, 52, and attempting to kill Gruer, 31.
He maintains his actions were in self-defense against thieves, one of whom came at him with a knife. The prosecution alleges Klund, a trained Marine rifleman, lost control when his personal property was threatened and he turned his St. Paul living room into a combat zone similar to those he had encountered while serving in Afghanistan in 2008.
Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Thomas Ring pushed Klund about why he had let two strangers into his apartment at 3 a.m. Klund said he believed he could trust them at that point because they had walked him home.
“They seemed like good people,” he said from the witness stand.
He soon found out they weren’t, he said.
After Gruer had been in the bathroom for what felt like too long, Klund decided to check to see what was going on, he testified. He encountered Gruer as he was leaving the bathroom. At that point, he said Gruer’s demeanor changed. His tone turned “terse” and his body language “rigid.”
Then Gruer asked for a drink. Klund complied, he said, so as not to antagonize Gruer further and used the time rummaging around his kitchen to come up with a plan.
When he returned from his kitchen, Gruer was standing in his hallway holding a wallet and a knife Klund kept on hand for work.
“At that time, how did you feel?” his defense attorney asked.
“That set off a whole bunch of warning bells in my brain,” Klund said. “My threat level did start to go up.”
Trained as a Marine to walk toward someone with a knife as a form of intimidation, Klund said he began to approach Gruer. He told Gruer to reconsider, and that he was making a mistake, Klund said. That’s when, he says, Gruer took a step toward him.
“What did you do?” asked his defense attorney, Elizabeth Switzer.
He yelled at her to stop, he testified, but she didn’t listen. So he decided to “engage body shots.”
“For lack of a better term … I (ran) balls to the wall to my front room,” Klund said.
He was after the pistol he kept locked in a safe in his ottoman, but then he suddenly remembered the rifle he had had out earlier.
He grabbed the gun and from there attempted various strategies to try to “de-escalate” the threat Gruer posed, he said.
Klund walked back toward Gruer holding the firearm, loaded a chamber and yelled at him to drop his stuff and leave. He also threatened to shoot him.
“I specifically told him I would shoot him if he didn’t comply,” Klund said.
Despite all his tactics, Gruer remained unmoving, gazing at him with a “blank stare,” Klund said.
That’s when Klund reportedly fired a warning shot.
Suddenly, Gruer threw something at him and ran back into the bathroom, locking the door behind him, Klund said. Startled and scared, he started shooting through the door.
He fired 24 rounds before stopping, experts had testified earlier in the trial.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, Klund saw Rawls reappear, he said. She was coming down the stairs from his lofted bedroom and running for the living room.
He yelled at her to stop, but she didn’t listen, he said. So he decided to “engage body shots.”
“Did you intend to kill her?” Switzer asked.
“No,” Klund said, repeating that his intent had just been to stop her.
At that point Klund said he started hearing Gruer screaming for his life behind the bathroom door. Deciding that Gruer likely no longer posed a threat, Klund used the butt of his rifle to bash through the door and unlock it from the inside. He then ran up to his bedroom to get a clotting agent from a first aid kit to tend to what appeared to be a gaping wound in Gruer’s neck. While upstairs, he tossed his rifle on his bed. Suddenly remembering that the clotting agent would be ineffective on Gruer’s type of wound, he said, he ran back down to the bathroom and started applying pressure to the injuries with towels.
Then he called 911. Audio of the call played at trial included Klund laughing at one point as he talked to the dispatcher about what had happened.
Police arrived to find Klund lying propped up in his hallway. Rawls was found dead in the living room. Gruer was on the bathroom floor bleeding out. He was taken to a hospital, where he underwent surgery for his wounds. He testified earlier in the trial.
Klund’s rifle was found on top of his bed.
Ring attempted to poke holes in Klund’s account during his cross-examination. He reminded the jury that Klund’s account Thursday differed drastically from what he told an investigator who first interviewed him shortly after the shooting.
During that initial interview, Klund said he shot Gruer after the man tried to steal his work computer. He told the investigator that Gruer had grabbed the computer and barricaded himself in the bathroom with it after Klund told him to put it back. He denied at that time that Gruer had threatened him with a knife.
Klund acknowledged the inconsistencies during Ring’s cross-examination and said his memory of what had happened got sharper as more time passed since the traumatic incident. He also said he had been drinking that night and had been up more than 24 hours by the time the interview with the investigator took place.
Gruer’s account of the night also differed from Klund’s. During his earlier testimony, Gruer said he was coming out of the bathroom when Klund suddenly shot him in the arm while standing in his bedroom loft. When he ran back into the bathroom to stop the bleeding, he said he heard additional shots ring out in the apartment. Then a spray of bullets started coming at him through the bathroom door, some striking his body. He also claims Klund attacked him with a knife.
“You ambushed (Gruer), right?” Ring asked Klund on Thursday.
“That’s incorrect,” Klund responded.
He testified that he saw “many” casualties during his service and later received awards for his conduct.
The prosecution and defense attempted to paint different pictures of the influence Klund’s military training had on his actions that night. The defense asserted that it allowed him to appropriately assess the danger he was in when Gruer stepped toward him with a knife and that he used several tools developed as a Marine to try to end the altercation with the least amount of damage.
The prosecution, alternatively, pointed out that Klund could have relied on the extensive training he had received in martial arts to end the altercation but he didn’t.
Klund reached the rank of corporal while serving in the Marines from 2007 to 2011. He was deployed in Afghanistan for seven months in 2008, where his squad worked to mitigate dangers the Taliban posed to civilians. He said he saw “many” casualties during his service and later received awards for his conduct.
“Death becomes a natural part of life. … You just expect it,” he said.
Rawls suffered gunshot wounds to her head, upper arm and thorax area during the shooting. She died from blood loss.
Her daughter, Athena Lund, said at trial that Rawls, who grew up in North Carolina and moved to Minnesota years ago, was a mother of two and a grandmother to nine.
Lund said previously that she would most remember her mother’s smile and her ability to befriend everyone.
Closing arguments in Klund’s trial are expected to take place Friday.