Witnesses Say Tuffree Used High-Powered Weapons in Fatal Confrontation

Daniel Allan Tuffree had Simi Valley Police Officer Michael Clark outgunned, witnesses testified Thursday: He wielded two guns to Clark’s one and fired much deadlier ammunition.

Police crime scene investigator Rebecca McConnell showed jurors guns and bullets that bore mute witness to the firepower spent in the swift gunfight that killed Clark.

She recalled how she plucked Clark’s 9-millimeter Beretta service pistol from a pool of his blood spilled on Tuffree’s patio and found its ammunition clip empty, its slide locked back showing that the semiautomatic was out of bullets.

And she described Tuffree’s weapons: a Taurus brand, .44-caliber magnum revolver that was soaked in his own blood, with two spent shells still in its cylinder. It was hidden beneath a blanket next to his bloodstained sofa, she said.

And McConnell showed jurors a .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol that was discovered in a gym bag in his living room along with a full clip and 90 rounds of ammunition for the two guns.

Both Tuffree and Clark’s shots found their mark, testified Robert Christansen, an independent firearms examiner. Just as two of Tuffree’s bullets struck Clark, so did one of Clark’s hit Tuffree, Christansen said.

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But while Clark fired standard department-issue Federal brand 9-millimeter ammunition, Tuffree was armed with bigger, higher-velocity bullets. He fired Black Talon-brand hollow points from the Glock, Christansen said, and semijacketed, hollow-point, Hydrashock rounds from the Taurus.

Both types of bullet are designed to expand on impact and cause more damage than conventional ammunition, he said.

“The .44 magnum is the most powerful hand-held firearm that you can normally buy in this country,” added Christansen, a 30-year veteran ballistics expert who worked for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department until 1986.

Earlier, jurors saw what investigators found Aug. 4, 1995--the bloody scene that was revealed after the gun smoke and tear gas cleared and Tuffree had been hauled off to be treated for his wounds and face murder charges that could earn him a death sentence.

Investigator McConnell testified that she videotaped the bullet-torn wreckage of Tuffree’s home just hours after the shooting.

The jury watched the eerily silent, 35-minute video, which paces past the bloodstained patio and empty gun left by the slain Clark, then dives inside Tuffree’s living room.

The camera’s eye sidesteps toppled furniture, zooms in on a carpet of shattered glass, then pulls back to show slug-pocked walls left by the gunfight with officers who were trying to save Clark’s life.

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It moves past the makeshift plywood barricade Tuffree apparently put up during the confrontation. It lingers on a huge splash of blood staining the living-room sofa near where investigators found Tuffree’s revolver. And it focuses on details such as a toppled lamp, shell casings, a spent ammunition clip and the gym bag in which Tuffree kept his guns.

Prosecutors presented the video without comment, then moved on to hand physical evidence to jurors: photos of Clark’s spent gun and shards of the shattered window through which the fatal gunfight blazed.

Testimony is scheduled to resume Monday.

Before testimony began Thursday, Kelli Sager, an attorney for The Times, pleaded with Superior Court Judge Allan Steele to unseal the transcripts of pretrial hearings in which attorneys secretly discussed Tuffree’s interview with police.

Attorneys for the prosecution and Tuffree argued that the contents of those hearings could prejudice the jury and influence the outcome of the trial. And they said that the contents of the transcripts will probably be made public by trial’s end anyway.

But Sager contended that case law leans heavily toward backing the public’s right to view all information in ongoing criminal trials and that the jury has been well warned not to read, view or listen to news accounts of the Tuffree trial.

Steele said he will take a day or two to study the arguments before rendering a decision.