Man guilty of second-degree murder

Monday, Aug. 1, 2005 | 9:46 a.m.

A jury on Friday determined Larry Pruett was guilty of second-degree murder for shooting his roommate and hiding the body in a freezer outside his home in July 2004.

It took the jury less than three hours of deliberations to disregard the 62-year-old Pruett's stance that he acted in self-defense when he killed his 45-year-old roommate, Bradley Millisor.

District Judge Sally Loehrer is scheduled to sentence Pruett on Sept. 21. The judge will have the option of sentencing Pruett to 20 to 50 years in prison or 20 years to life.

The jury foreperson said the jury's first vote was 11-1 in favor of second-degree murder, with one juror saying voluntary manslaughter was the appropriate verdict.

Special Public Defender David Schieck said he thought he had a "legitimate chance at voluntary manslaughter because there was enough evidence of provocation, that Brad (Millisor) was the aggressor."

In closing arguments on Thursday, however, Chief Deputy District Attorney Erik Jorgensen said Pruett's actions equated to "eviction by shotgun."

Jorgensen and co-counsel Deputy District Attorney Kristin Seabrook said Pruett was frustrated with Millisor as a roommate, and because the law kept him from evicting Millisor without 30 days' notice, he took the law into his own hands and shot him twice.

Pruett said he was sleeping and when he awoke to find Millisor with a knife to his throat, he grabbed his shotgun. Pruett said he followed Millisor as his roommate ran to his bedroom.

Pruett said that when he reached the bedroom door he shot once just as Millisor was attempting to throw the knife at him.

Pruett told police he feared for his life. He then placed his body in the freezer. He paid friends to bury the body in the desert, but they dumped the freezer with the body inside in Pruett's driveway a few days later instead, according to the arrest report.

The validity of Pruett's self-defense claim was brought into question by the way he ultimately told police about it. He first told the police he had no idea how Millisor ended up in the freezer, and that he believed Millisor had gone to California with a blonde woman.

Pruett only began claiming he killed Millisor in self-defense after detectives told him they knew Millisor was "a bad ass" who had threatened Pruett and others in the past.

In the videotaped statement to detectives played in court Thursday after admitting to killing his roommate Pruett said "I feel real bad, I'd never killed anyone before."

When asked if he could have avoided killing Millisor Pruett answered "No, I think he (Millisor) would have killed me."

At the end of the interview Metro Detective Phil Ramos told Pruett if his self-defense story was true he should have called the police immediately "instead of calling friends to get rid of the body."