Bruce Macaulay was asleep in his apartment early Sept. 12, 2000, and had no idea four men were trying to get in to do him harm.
It was just before 3:30 a.m., and Macaulay woke up to a drunken intruder who had been boosted up to the second-floor balcony of his south Everett apartment.
He took an aluminum baseball bat away from the intruder and struck him on the head with it.
A few seconds later, a man below fired three shots. One pierced Macaulay’s heart, killing him.
The man on the balcony was Mark Wade Knight, 28, of Everett. He went on trial Tuesday, charged with first-degree murder for participating in the shooting death.
The death was prompted by a “lethal combination of pride, testosterone and booze,” deputy prosecutor Craig Matheson told Judge Larry McKeeman and jurors in Snohomish County Superior Court.
Everett defense lawyer Mickey Krom, however, said Knight may have been standing in a drunken stupor on Macaulay’s balcony, but he didn’t even know that his companion, Ty Anthony Wilshusen, had a gun.
“Mark Knight didn’t kill anyone. Mark Knight didn’t plan to kill anyone,” Krom told jurors.
The trial, which is likely to continue into next week, is Knight’s second chance to convince a jury that he is innocent of the crime. He was convicted and sentenced to 21 years in prison in 2001, but the conviction was overturned by the state Court of Appeals.
Wilshusen got a 28-year-term, but his conviction stood.
In court Tuesday, Matheson told jurors that the death stemmed from the theft of $200 from Macaulay a few weeks before the shooting. The theft happened when Knight accompanied another man to Macaulay’s apartment to buy some marijuana, Matheson said.
Macaulay blamed Knight or one of the other young men in Wilshusen’s group for the theft and repeatedly made threatening phone calls. Wilshusen became incensed at the calls and vowed to get even.
On the fatal night, “they went there to do Brian Macaulay harm, and he ended up dead. That’s first-degree murder,” Matheson told jurors.
Krom said Knight suffers from a mental disorder. That, plus his heavy drinking that night, left him incapable of participating in any plot.
“He was just doing what he was told – going with the flow,” Krom said. “He didn’t see the shooting. He didn’t know what happened. He just knew he was hurt.”
Knight was arrested after he went to a hospital for the head injury caused by the baseball bat.
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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