Former Lompoc prison guard Timothy McNally stands as the jury enters into a Santa Maria court room Monday. McNally stands trial a second time for the allegedly murdering of a friend after a night of drinking and ingesting bath salts.
Santa Maria Times
Prior to surrendering to police outside his father’s west Pine Avenue home, a Lompoc man accused of killing his friend earlier that evening made statements about committing suicide and told his father the shooting was accidental.
Timothy McNally, a former prison guard, also told his father the alleged shooting that left one man dead was nothing but a bad dream from which he was going to wake up.
McNally, 33, is accused of shooting his friend, Gary Bent, once in the left side of the neck on March 8, 2012, in a room at the Lompoc Embassy Suites, after the pair partied and ingested bath salts the night before.
He is facing one count of second-degree murder for Bent’s death, as well as an enhancement charge of using a gun during the commission of a deadly crime.
A second trial in the case started Monday, after jurors failed to reach an unanimous verdict at the conclusion of McNally’s first trial earlier this year.
On Tuesday, McNally’s father, Michael McNally, took the witness stand and told jurors his son was “emotionless” after the alleged shooting and he was worried the younger McNally may take his life.
“At the time, he said, ‘Shall I shoot myself,’” Michael McNally testified, adding at the time Timothy McNally made the statement he was repeatedly pointing a gun toward the base of his skull. “I told him, ‘No,’ I don’t need two deaths in the living room.”
