Thursday, March 6, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
After being evicted from his mother's home and having a temporary restraining order issued against him, it was only a matter of minutes before 43-year-old Tyrone Howard returned.
What happened then will have to be determined by a jury, which began hearing testimony Tuesday in District Judge Myron Leavitt's courtroom.
What the jury does know is that Howard's 70-year-old mother was shot four times in the March 18, 1996, incident and no one contended that the gun wasn't in Howard's hand.
Deputy District Attorney David Schwartz said the slaying of Catherlena Howard was premeditated first-degree murder by a vindictive son who sneaked back into the house and grabbed his mother as she walked down a hallway.
Deputy Public Defender Ralph Baker said during his opening statement that the death was less than first-degree murder, although he did not specify whether it was second-degree murder, manslaughter or justifiable.
Baker portrayed Catherlena Howard as a manipulative mother who would pretend to help her son in an effort to snatch the inheritance he received from her ex-husband.
Baker said that when business deals went sour and the nearly $700,000 inheritance ran out, she threw her son out of the house at 6709 Larchwood Lane, near Spring Mountain Road and Rainbow Boulevard.
The defense attorney said his client didn't go to the house to kill anyone, but only to retrieve the .38-caliber pistol his father had left him. It was when she came at him with a glass frying pan after he had obtained the gun that Catherlena Howard was shot, the defense says.
Schwartz countered that the woman "had nothing in her hands" and said the state's witnesses would tell a different story of the incident.
He said the woman had been trying for a year to get her son to move from her home and finally had to resort to evicting him.
Catherlena Howard had told a friend that her son had threatened to shoot her and burn down the house if eviction proceedings were initiated, the prosecutor said.
After Metro Police officers had evicted Tyrone Howard, he was spotted sneaking back to the home. His mother called 911, but she entered the home before police arrived.
Schwartz told the jury that the woman was walking down the hallway, followed by a locksmith who had changed the home's locks, when she disappeared into a room.
The locksmith is expected to testify that he heard her say in a muffled voice, "He's back, he's back." A moment later two shots rang out and the woman began praying for someone to help her.
A backyard neighbor, according to Schwartz, will testify that the injured woman ran from the house but was shot a third time and collapsed. The fourth bullet was fired as she lay helplessly on the ground.
Schwartz called the shooting a "senseless, premeditated murder ... by the man she brought into the world."
But Baker said Tyrone Howard was "disoriented" because he didn't understand why his mother was tossing him into the streets.
"He was completely adrift in confusion and pain," Baker said. "It was like the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima -- total devastation."
The defense attorney said Tyrone Howard feared his mother was going to get her own pistol and "he didn't want to be shot."
"He followed her around and the gun is going off," Baker said. "All he is thinking is, 'Stop, please stop.'"
The defendant fled the home after the incident but was captured by SWAT officers two hours later hiding in a neighbor's storage shed, clutching the revolver that police said still held four spent cartridges.
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