Terry Lamaire Gaines emptied his .45-caliber handgun in shooting a man nine times after a Colorado Springs rap concert, killing him in cold blood, prosecutors charged Tuesday.

But lawyers for Gaines claim the 24-year-old unemployed landscape worker was just trying to defend himself from a man who had made threatening gestures and seemed to be reaching for a gun.

Those were the opening statements made to jurors at a first-degree murder trial where Gaines is accused in the April 3, 2009, fatal shooting of Michael Allen Davis.

Davis, a 27-year-old father with two children, died in a parking lot outside the Mr. Biggs Event Center at 5825 Mark Dabling Blvd. after a concert by California rapper E-40.

Deputy District Attorney Gail Post told the jury that the shooting was unprovoked.

“This is a senseless, violent and cold-blooded killing,” she said. “He pulled the trigger of a .45-caliber weapon over and over and over again.”

She said the jurors will hear how Gaines, while leading police on a high-speed chase along southbound Interstate 25, called his mother to say he had shot someone.

Post said the mother urged her son to toss his gun out the window. Instead, he tucked it behind the driver’s seat.

Later, when the chase ended just north of Pueblo, Post said Gaines told officers, “You’ve got the pistol. You’ve got it all. What are you waiting for, (racial epithet)? Let’s go to jail.”

But defense attorney Phil Winegar countered that Davis had flashed menacing gestures as if he were pointing a gun at Gaines while inside the concert.

After the concert, Winegar said Gaines walked up to Davis, who was sitting in the front passenger seat of a car, and asked, “Remember me?” Davis responded by lurching as if he were going to grab something inside the vehicle, the lawyer said.

“In that moment, when he (Gaines) saw Mr. Davis reach he defends himself. He pulls his gun and fires.”

Winegar told jurors that they will hear from several people who attended the concert that night, people who, like Gaines, come from a different culture than the average juror. They dress, walk and carry themselves differently, he said.

All the prosecution witnesses have one thing in common, he added.

“None of them will say, ‘I actually saw this happen,’” the attorney said.

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

The Tenmile range was awash in snow Wednesday and more is on the way. Photo by Breckenridge Ski Resort Facebook page