By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – A Lewis County jury is expected to resume deliberations this morning in the September 2009 gunshot death of 28-year-old Sara M. Whitson of Chehalis.
Whitson’s then-live-in boyfriend Jesse P. Karr is charged with manslaughter in the case.
The National Guardsman had just returned home from Iraq about a month earlier when aid and police were called to their apartment to a report of an accidental gunshot.
Karr said he was unloading Whitson’s .22 caliber pistol when it went off in his hand, shooting him in his finger and Whitson in the abdomen. She died during emergency surgery.
Centralia defense attorney Don McConnell contends it was a tragic accident; Deputy Prosecutor Colin Hayes told jurors it was a reckless act.
A jury of eight women and four men began deliberating at noon yesterday and went home at 5:30 p.m. They were set to return at 9 o’clock this morning to the courthouse in Chehalis.
The jury is contemplating first-degree manslaughter and second-degree manslaughter.
Karr, now 31, remains free on bail.
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Read background on the case, here
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter