KINGSTON >> In the early morning hours of Feb. 3, 2014, Aron J. Thomas went to his job as a maintenance worker at the Midtown Kingston office of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.
Less than an hour later, the 33-year-old Olivebridge man was dead, lying face down in a pool of blood on a maintenance shop floor.
On Wednesday, testimony began in Ulster County Court in the second-degree murder trial of David N. Reese, 56, a co-worker accused of fatally shooting Thomas.
Department of Environmental Protection Police Capt. Justin Kight testified for the prosecution that he was in his office just before 7 a.m. when he heard a knock on his door and saw Reese standing on the other side.
“I opened the door and propped my door open with my left foot and said, ‘What’s up?'” Kight testified. He said Reese, who had a cell phone to his ear, didn’t say anything but turned around and lifted his shirt to expose what Kight said was a “Glock [pistol] in his back pocket.”
Kight said he grabbed the gun and put it on a shredder in his office and began to walk with Reese out of the building. He said as they were heading outside, Reese said to him, “‘You know they’ve been breaking into my office and Aron’s been stalking me?'”
Kight said he again asked Reese what was going on and Reese responded, “‘I shot Aron twice.'”
In her opening statement to the four-man, eight-woman jury, Ulster County Assistant District Attorney Katherine Van Loan outlined the minutes between Thomas’ arrival at the Department of Environmental Protection building at 71 Smith Ave. and the 6:44 a.m. phone call Reese made to 911 reporting he had “shot a man.”
“Within one hour of arriving at his place of employment, he (Thomas) was dead, shot in the neck by his co-worker in maintenance, this man,” Van Loan said, pointing at Reese. One bullet entered behind Thomas’ ear and traveled into his back, where it severed his spinal cord, she said. She said Thomas also had a wound on the top of his head that medical authorities will testify was caused by blunt-force trauma, as well as scrapes on his forehead.
Van Loan said Reese told authorities he shot his co-worker twice because Thomas had been stalking him and had broken into Reese’s home in Gilboa, Schoharie County.
She said Reese brought a handgun to work with him to confront Thomas about the alleged burglary.
But she also noted Thomas lived more than an hour’s drive from Reese’s home and that a burglary report had been made to local authorities.
Van Loan said testimony over the course of the trial, which is expected to last about a week, will show Thomas was unarmed when he was killed and that the room in which he was shot showed no signs of a struggle, that everything was “very orderly.”
“The only thing out of place was the body of Aron Thomas, blood drops and the [bullet] casings,” she said.
Van Loan said prosecution witnesses will testify the weapon recovered from Reese belonged to him and that the rounds found in Thomas’ body were consistent with ones fired from Reese’s gun.
Dutchess County Senior Assistant Public Defender Jeffrey Hoerter, who is representing Reese because of a conflict in the Ulster County defender’s office, didn’t dispute that the evidence will support much of what was outlined by Van Loan.
“It is certain Mr. Thomas is dead, and it is certain that Mr. Reese is involved in that death,” Hoerter said.
But there is more to the story that what the prosecution will present, he said.
“There was, to put it mildly, a strained relationship between the two men,” Hoerter said. There “was more to situation than just Reese thinking that Thomas burglarized his home or was stalking him.”
Hoerter urged jurors to listen to all the circumstances surrounding the events leading up to Thomas’ death and determine “whether the intent was there to cause his death.”
Reese, dressed in a black suit and tie, sat next to his attorneys, sometimes writing on a pad, sometimes looking straight ahead. He never appeared to make eye contact with any of the witnesses, even when Kight identified him by pointing directly at him.
Kight said that after walking outside with Reese the morning of the killing, he put handcuffs on him then turned him over to the Kingston Police Department.
Kight said he then led emergency medical personnel to the maintenance shop where Reese told him Thomas’ body was located. When he opened the door, he said, he saw Thomas “was laying on the ground” and “wasn’t moving.”
Also testifying for the prosecution Wednesday was Kingston Police Officer Brian Shuman, one of the first officers to arrive at the scene. He said was he was taken to the maintenance room and saw “a victim lying on the ground with blood pooling around him.” Shuman said his partner checked for a pulse and that when he couldn’t find one, they secured the room and left.
Shuman also testified that he met with Kight, who gave him the weapon he had taken from Reese.
The trial, over which Ulster County Judge Donald A. Williams is presiding, is to resume at 10 a.m. Thursday.
If convicted of second-degree murder, Reese could be sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison.
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