Terry Lamaire Gaines told jurors Wednesday he had no choice when he shot a man nine times following a Colorado Springs rap concert.

Gaines, 24, was the final witness in a first-degree murder trial in which he is accused of killing Michael Allen Davis, 27, on April 3, 2009 in a parking lot outside the Mr. Biggs Event Center.

There was bad blood between the two men, Gaines testified. He claimed Davis had ripped him off a few years earlier by paying for marijuana with a counterfeit $100 bill. Then during the concert, Gaines said Davis turned around and made a gun-like gesture with his hand.

After the concert, Gaines said he retrieved his .45 caliber Glock handgun, stuck it in his waistband and walked over to confront Davis who was sitting in the front passenger seat of a Mercedes-Benz.

“I wanted to squash the issue, to get past it,” Gaines told the jury. “Let’s put an end to this so that no one I love gets hurt and no one he loves gets hurt.”

“Did you plan to shoot him?” Gaines’ defense attorney Bill Griffin asked.

“No,” Gaines replied. “But if it came down to that, I guess that’s what it would be.”

Gaines said he stood next to Davis and asked “Do you remember me?”

“He looked at me with a shocked expression and then reached for something,” Gaines said. “So I shot him first.”

In a terse set of exchanges, Chief Deputy District Attorney Diana K. May asked why Gaines came up from behind the Mercedes.

“You didn’t want to him (Davis) to see you,” she said.

“That wasn’t my plan,” Gaines replied.

May asked him about the shooting. “You didn’t see the gun?”

“I saw him reach,” Gaines replied.

“You didn’t see a gun,” May repeated.

“I saw him reach, so I guess I didn’t see a gun,” Gaines said.

The jury will begin deliberations after hearing final arguments on Thursday morning.

For more on this trial, visit “The Sidebar” blog at gazettedev.gazette.com

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