NEW YORK -- Subway gunman Bernhard Goetz's confession says he calmly checked each of his wounded victims and when one appeared not to have been badly injured said, 'You don't look so bad. Here's another,' and fired again.
Videotaped confessions made to New Hampshire police when Goetz surrendered on New Year's Eve were released Wednesday during a pretrial hearing on charges of illegal weapons possession.
The weapons charges stem from the Dec. 22 subway shooting that erupted after five teenagers asked Goetz for $5.
Goetz, 37, who had been mugged before the subway incident, has said he feared their request was a prelude to an attack.
Goetz fled to New Hampshire after the shootings.
The New Hampshire confessions indicate that Goetz gave conflicting accounts of whether he was afraid of the four teenagers.
After standing up and shooting each of the youths once, Goetz bent over to check each of his victims, the confession said. One of the youths was slumped against a subway seat with no blood visible.
Goetz then told police he said, 'You don't look so bad. Here's another,' and fired at him again. That shot missed, police said.
'I really don't understand why so much commotion has been made over this,' Goetz said in an interview on 'The CBS Morning News' today. 'This was one more incident of street violence in New York City.'
'Perhaps society doesn't know how to cope, particularly in New York City, with the situation where a person is assaulted and turns around and attacks the people who are assaulting him in the same situation,' Goetz said.
'I feel that almost everyone would have reacted in the same way that I did,' he said.
Justice Stephen Crane ordered a hearing March 19 to consider a request from Goetz's lawyers to dismiss the weapons charges on the grounds that the unregistered gun Goetz fired was used in self-defense.
Crane said he will review the minutes of the grand jury's deliberations to make sure the jury acted properly and the weapons charges were appropriate.
Crane told Goetz, who is free on a $5,000 bond, he did not need to appear at the March 19 hearing, but reminded him, 'You understand you must make yourself available at the request of the court.'
Goetz agreed and surrendered his passport to the court.
As Goetz and his attorneys left, two women seated in the court rose and screamed, 'Racist scum! Racist scum! Remember Darrell Cabey!'
Cabey, one of the wounded teenagers, remains in a coma.
Crane ordered the women, Marian Banszhaf, 22, and Charlene Gaubis, 23, held for contempt of court, but released them without charges after they apologized to the court.