Deliberation set to begin tomorrow for Trott trial

For the first time since the trial started, the 14 jurors heard Corey Allen Trott speak.

The words Thursday morning, September 4, were few but when asked by District Judge Thomas Bice, Trott simply stated he would not testify in his trial.

Trott is accused of shooting and killing Rockwell City Police Officer Jamie Buenting while he and a group of officers were executing an arrest warrant for the 33-year old Rockwell City man.

This statement came after Scott Brown, an assistant Iowa attorney general and one of the prosecuting attorneys, called four witnesses to the stand.

Brown first called Jeff Feldhans, of the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office, then Peter Wagner, an investigator from the Iowa Department of  Criminal Investigation.

Wagner described what he observed during his walk through of both the outside first then inside of 502 Pleasant Street, Trott’s residence in Rockwell City.

The significant item Wagner inventoried from the walkthrough was the spent shell casing found in the office/weight room.

“Where there in the lower left hand corner (of the picture) where there is a marker, marked 28…this is…the location of the Wolf .223 REM casing we found in the room,” Wagner said.

Wagner confirmed there were no other spent shell casings in the house.

Karl Bessman, a criminalist with the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation who specializes in the analysis of firearms, said his main function in this particular case was to examine the spent shell casing, the .223 bolt-action rifle used and a couple pieces of Buenting’s clothing.

He did so and found that the test bull-ets he fired and the one fired from the rifle could have been manufactured by the same company.

The examination of the clothes and a test done of shooting at pieces of cloth at distances of one up to six feet also helped Bessman guestimate about how far Trott was from Buenting when he fired the shot.

He said he concluded that the shot was taken from a distance of at least five feet.

The jury also learned from the forensic autopsy done by Dr. Jonathan Thompson, who is an associate medical examiner for the State of Iowa, did confirm two things.

Buenting death is a homicide and he died as a result of the shot that hit his throat region.

The prosecution did not call any more witnesses and the defense did not call any witnesses to the stand.

Bice then proceeded to instruct the jury that they will be hearing final argu-ments from both sides tomorrow, receive a law of instructions, and deliberate the case.

At around 1:15 p.m., the judge announced the court was in recess until tomorrow morning.