Trial starts in shooting death in St. Paul bar parking lot

Audie Matthews is accused of killing Blaine Christofferson during a robbery after a group of friends left a St. Paul club.

By PAT PHEIFER, Star Tribune

Last update: October 30, 2009 - 7:20 PM

'Things happened that wasn't supposed to. I messed up," Audie Matthews allegedly told his mother during a jailhouse phone call two days after Blaine Christofferson was shot to death in a parking lot on St. Paul's East Side.

Matthews, 33, is on trial in Ramsey County District Court, charged with first-degree intentional murder while committing or attempting to commit aggravated robbery and second-degree intentional murder.

In his opening statement Friday, prosecutor John Ristad laid out for a jury the story of Christofferson's death -- more than 19 months after the crime.

Christofferson, 39, had been drinking with friends at the Mounds Park Lounge in St. Paul on the evening of March 7, 2008. When that bar closed at 1 a.m., they headed to the Cherry Pit at Minnehaha and White Bear Avenues. At closing time, a friend, Brenda Dzubak, offered them a ride home, and they walked to her minivan parked in lot across Minnehaha Avenue.

That's when a man wearing a brown ski mask and a hooded jacket approached them from across the street. He pointed a gun at Christofferson's head and told him, "Give me your money," Ristad said.

Christofferson, of St. Paul, handed the gunman his wallet. He struggled with the robber and ran, when "bang! the first shot goes off," Ristad said, and Christofferson fell. From the ground, Christofferson shouted a racial epithet at the gunman, who turned, stood over him and fired a second shot. The gunman ran west on Minnehaha, then turned north at the corner, a witness said Friday.

Another friend of Christofferson's who was hiding behind a truck in the parking lot called 911, and police arrived shortly thereafter. Officers and a police dog tracked shoe prints and the gunman's scent a few blocks north. They found a jacket, a ski mask, gloves and a .40-caliber handgun along the way.

Matthews was on foot when police spotted him. He was sweaty and wearing just pants and a T-shirt, despite the 5-degree temperature, according to court documents. After he hopped into his ex-girlfriend's car and tried to drive away, he was stopped and arrested. Officers found blood on his shoes and on money he carried, the documents said.

Ristad said bullet casings found at the crime scene matched the recovered gun. A mixture of DNA was found on the ski mask and on the gun, and while 99 and 84 percent of the world's population can be excluded from those items, respectively, Matthews' DNA could not be excluded.

Defense attorney Nicole Kubista, however, told the jury in her opening statement that Matthews told police, "I haven't done anything."

Matthews was a regular at the Cherry Pit, she said. He was there that night, met up with a woman and had sex with her in a car. He wasn't wearing a jacket when he was stopped because he left it in the car; Kubista said. When he left, he saw the "drama" across the street, but he walked the other way.

Ariel Aragones, Dzubak and Daniel Fike all testified Friday that they saw all or parts of what happened in the parking lot. None of them could identify Matthews as the shooter.

"As the ambulance was coming, he gave out," Aragones said of Christofferson. "I was holding his hand."

Under cross-examination by Kubista, Dzubak acknowledged that she had described the shooter to police as "a smaller black kid." That was "because of his size," she told Ristad under redirect. Matthews is 5 feet 8, 165 pounds, according to state driver license records.

Pat Pheifer • 612-741-4992

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