Mechanic takes stand at his murder trial

A Glen Head mechanic who fatally shot a co-worker in 2018 told jurors Tuesday he grabbed his gun because he believed the fellow employee was picking up a tool to hit him after threatening him while using a racial slur.

Defendant Lawrence Grammer also said he hadn’t intended to open fire with his .45-caliber pistol unless Bashir Ward did attack him with a weapon, but "the gun went off" after he racked it to load a bullet into the chamber to shoot.

"I had to protect myself," Grammer, 74, said while testifying in Nassau County Court at his trial on murder and weapon charges.

Jurors previously heard a recording of a 911 call Grammer placed after the shooting in which he asked for police to respond to the Glen Head Road location and declared: "I just killed a guy."

The deadly shooting on Aug. 4, 2018, happened a day after prosecutors said Grammer and Ward, 35, of Valley Stream, got into a shoving match their boss broke up.

The prosecution said that initial confrontation happened after Ward, who used a racial slur and pushed Grammer to the ground, intervened while Grammer was in a dispute with another employee at D & R Automotive. That dispute was about money possibly being docked from Grammer's paycheck because of a gas purchase, the defense has said.

Grammer told police during a videotaped interview after the homicide that he shot Ward after he called out Ward’s name and the man didn’t acknowledge him as the two worked close to each other in the garage bay on the day after their shoving match.

Grammer testified Tuesday during questioning by defense attorney Joseph Lo Piccolo that it was Ward who antagonized him before he grabbed a gun from his Durango, which he had parked behind a Jeep that Ward was working on in a bay of the body shop.

"You know what happened yesterday? It might happen today," Grammer testified Ward told him, while using a racial slur.

Grammer said he then told Ward to back off, but Ward taunted him and used the same slur again before appearing to reach for something.

"I thought he was getting something to hit me with," the defendant testified, saying he was "scared" at the time.

Then a single blast from the gun at point-blank range — which hit Ward in the back of the head — "frightened me," said Grammer, who added that at first he didn’t think he had pulled the trigger.

The defendant also testified that Ward — who was married and had a 5-year-old daughter when he died — had "jumped" on him two or three times previously at work.

Prosecutor Tracy Keeton previously told jurors in her opening statement that Grammer planned to kill Ward after their shoving match on Aug. 3, 2018.

She said Grammer put his gun and a loaded magazine in a Toyota parked near the body shop before transferring the weapon to his Durango the next day while running an errand and then driving the Durango into the business.

But as Keeton cross-examined Grammer on Tuesday, the defendant insisted the gun he bought years earlier at a McDonald’s in Harlem for $42 was already in his Durango that morning.

Grammer denied telling police "I know I did the wrong thing," after a replay in court of his videotaped interview with police depicted him making that statement.

Grammer also claimed Tuesday he never told police he shot Ward after Ward ignored him, despite a replay in court of Grammer giving that account during the recorded interview.

The defendant agreed the recording "had to be" altered when Keeton inquired further. Grammer also said during his cross-exam that he didn't see a weapon in Ward's hand and Ward didn't use force on him immediately before the shooting.

Lo Piccolo told jurors in his opening statement that Ward, a younger and bigger man, previously had threatened Grammer with a sledgehammer.

Closing arguments are expected Wednesday.