MISSOULA, Mont., Dec. 4 (UPI) -- The parents of a German exchange student killed by a Montana man who said he was a burglar wept Thursday as a prosecutor described their son's death.
Jurors were shown the gun Markus Kaarma used to kill Diren Dede, 17, in April in his garage in Missoula. Guicin Dede, the teenager's father, sobbed as Assistant Missoula County Prosecutor Jennifer Clark displayed the weapon.
Clark even fired the unloaded gun, trying to demonstrate how long Kaarma would have spent firing the shots that killed Dede.
Paul Ryan, Kaarma's lawyer, spoke for more than an hour. He told jurors that Dede was participating in a burglary ring with other students at Big Sky High School, and that Kaarma suffers from social anxiety and was dealing with it by smoking marijuana.
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Kaarma was badly rattled by an earlier burglary, Ryan said. He acknowledged that the items taken included drugs.
The prosecution says that Kaarma and his partner, Janelle Pflager, turned his garage into a trap, equipped with motion sensors and video cameras and leaving the door partly open with a purse visible from the outside.
Clark said Kaarma watched the video for almost half a minute before he used his gun.
The case has attracted a lot of attention in Germany, where gun ownership and violence are far less common than in the United States. Bernhard Docke, a prominent German lawyer, is in Missoula for the trial. Docke has testified in at least one U.S. court as well as representing a Guantanamo Bay prisoner from Turkey.
Dede grew up in Hamburg. His family is originally from Turkey.
