A man who shot a neighbor to death over a property line dispute was found guilty of second-degree murder on Wednesday.
Stanley Douglas Nyberg, 62, claimed that he feared his neighbor wanted to crush him with rocks, so he shot her in self-defense.
Dina Camp, 44, died March 20 at the scene of the disputed property line, along a riverbank in the Sky Country Club near Index.
The Snohomish County Superior Court jury deliberated 1 1/2 days before convicting Nyberg of killing Camp of Boise, Idaho.
Nyberg stands to serve between 15 and 20 years in prison when Judge Ronald Castleberry sentences him Oct. 27. Nyberg was being held without bail.
In her closing argument on Wednesday, deputy prosecutor Kathy Jo Kristof displayed a photograph of Camp on a courtroom screen and then pointed to the defense table where Nyberg sat.
Camp and Nyberg had been feuding for years over the property line between their cabins.
Kristof said the trial was not about a survey or a property line.
“It’s about what this man here did to this woman, Dina Camp,” she told jurors. Of the dispute, she said, “he resolved it himself with his gun.”
Defense lawyer Pete Mazzone said it was Camp who was the aggressor, springing out and pushing Nyberg over an embankment along the Skykomish River.
He claimed she pushed him when he tried to stop her from removing rocks from the disputed piece of land.
Nyberg testified that he hurt his back, shoulder and knee in the fall.
“Did Mr. Nyberg have a good-faith belief that he was about to suffer great personal injury?” Mazzone asked jurors. “I submit he already suffered great personal injury.”
Kristof alleged the shooting was retaliation for Camp shoving him off the bank.
“No sliver of land is worth the life of Dina Camp,” she told jurors.
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
