ST. GEORGE — A man accused of shooting his landlord went to trial Monday, and before rendering a verdict, the jury heard two different accounts of how the incident unfolded.

In the end, two recorded 911 calls, one of which contained the entire incident, turned out to be key in determining how the man died and what the jury decided.

The case against Joel Curtis Flores, 43, who was arrested after a deadly incident reported Nov. 30, 2022, went to trial Monday in 5th District Court in St. George. Flores was charged with murder and felony discharge of a firearm — each a first-degree felony. He was also charged with third-degree felony aggravated assault and possession of a weapon by a restricted person, as well as misdemeanor intoxication.

District Judge Eric A. Ludlow presided over the jury trial while Prosecutors Grace Deist and Lane Wood represented the state and defense attorney Ryan Stout represented Flores.

The state called seven witnesses, including the woman who was with Flores prior to the altercation, as well as the victim’s daughter and several officers and detectives who responded to the scene. They also called the medical examiner who performed the autopsy. The defense called Flores to the stand.

The incident 

Emergency dispatch received a call Nov. 30, 2022, from the area of 740 N. 1100 East in St. George reporting Flores was threatening several individuals with a firearm, according to charging documents filed at the time.

Responding officers heard gunshots as they arrived and then found the victim, 63-year-old Richard Harper lying in the doorway of his residence — deceased. The victim, who was Flores’s landlord, lived at the residence with his 17-year-old daughter, and Flores was staying in an adjacent camper trailer on the property.

The night of the shooting, investigators learned Flores had been fighting with a female friend who ran inside the victim’s residence and Harper called police.

Minutes later, Flores approached the residence and fired as many as a dozen shots from a .22-caliber rifle from outside the home. The rounds went through the glass sliding door of Harper’s residence, and at least two struck and killed the victim.

Flores was taken into custody and booked into Washington County’s Purgatory Correctional Facility early the following morning facing first-degree murder and other charges.

The events that transpired during the first of two 911 calls were at issue during the trial, and ultimately the eight-person jury would decide as to whether the suspect shot in self-defense or if the victim was murdered.

Calls to emergency dispatch 

Harper made the first call to emergency dispatch after he heard screaming coming from the defendant’s trailer, where Flores and a female friend, Pamela Brown, were involved in an altercation that escalated. The woman ran out of the trailer and into the victim’s house. Harper locked the sliding door and called 911 while the woman and the victim’s teenage daughter hid in the back bedrooms waiting for officers to arrive.

During the call, the defendant could be heard outside the residence, gauging from the sound of someone knocking at the door, during which emergency dispatch told the witness to stay away from the door. Several minutes into the call the victim can be heard saying he wasn’t going to open the door because Flores “was all pissed off.”

The phone was passed to the victim’s daughter, and according to the 911 recording, seven seconds later she told emergency dispatch the suspect had a gun and had just shot through the door. When dispatch asked the girl if her father was OK, the daughter was heard saying, “I don’t know — I sure hope so.”

Unbeknownst to the daughter at that time was that her father had already been shot and was lying in the doorway of the residence just as officers arrived, which could also be heard as the 911 call ended.

Detectives learned that while the victim’s daughter was still on the phone with 911, the suspect made a call to 911 and reported that his landlord attacked him so he shot him. Flores said the victim was injured and needed an ambulance, and he also told dispatch the attack and the shooting took place outside the residence, according to the recording that was played at trial.

Scene details

Responding officers approached the property, but instead of going directly to the residence, they shouted for the suspect to come out with his hands up. The reason officers did not initially see the victim as the property was crowded and not well lit. The porch area near where the victim was lying was also blocked from view, according to photos and testimony provided by St. George Police Lt. Choli Ence during the trial.

Shortly after the shooting, officers spoke to witnesses, including the victim’s teenage daughter who spent the majority of the time tucked in a hallway while the incident was unfolding. She testified during the trial that she could hear her father talking to the 911 operator while he had the phone and said she heard a gunshot and the glass door shattering. This was audible on the 911 recording as well, followed by scuffling and thudding noises coming from inside the living room and then more shots.

Officers found the victim, who was in his pajamas and sock feet, lying facedown with his head resting on the patio and his feet inside the house. Detectives collected shell casings from both inside and outside the residence. They also found an unfired round on the porch near the sliding door and two airsoft pistol-type BB guns in the back of the victim’s house.

When Flores was taken into custody, officers noted blood on his clothing and scrapes and cuts to his arms and hands. He was first transported to the St. George Police Department for an interview and then to jail while detectives processed the scene.

The investigation 

On the stand, St. George Police Detective Z. Bate said the investigation entailed collecting and analyzing cellphone data, 911 call recordings and other data to formulate a timeline of events. It revealed the incident began shortly before 7:35 p.m., when the witness arrived at the defendant’s trailer roughly 30 minutes prior to the first 911 call.

The .22 rifle used in the shooting was registered to the defendant’s friend, Brown, who testified she had brought the gun to the defendant’s trailer that night because she had concerns about a family member. She testified that Flores attacked her shortly after she showed up to the trailer and then threatened to kill her with the rifle. She said she could hear the victim outside yelling for Flores to let her go, and once she broke free, she ran into the victim’s house.

He also said the defendant’s account that he was defending himself during the confrontation that took place outside was inconsistent with where the victim was found – “with his feet still inside of his own residence.” When officers arrived, they found the sliding door in the closed position with the dowel securing the door still in the track.

The jury saw photos, some of which were taken of the defendant within hours of the incident and were devoid of any facial injuries, bruising or defensive wounds that would be consistent with an attack. What the images did show, Bate said, were abrasions and cuts to the suspect’s arms and hip that appeared to have been caused by broken glass.

The autopsy

Medical Examiner Dr. Neil Haycocks, a forensic pathologist with the Utah State Medical Examiner’s Office who performed the autopsy, said the victim sustained two penetrating gunshot wounds to the left side of the neck and torso. Evidence showed the shots were fired at a close enough range to leave stippling, Haycocks said, which is soot and gunpowder that is expelled from the weapon when fired.

The bullet traveled from the left in nearly a straight-forward direction and struck the neck. The second bullet struck the torso and also came from the left and was a contact wound; the gun was pressed up against the skin or clothing when the shot was fired. 

The defense’s position

The defense described the events that transpired that night as a series of “tragic misunderstandings” that led to a very tragic outcome, and the defense contended it was a confrontation hours earlier that played a role in the shooting.

On the morning of the incident, Brown had shown up at the defendant’s trailer unannounced and found him in bed with another woman and became “very upset,” Stout said. Later that evening, Flores was drinking and invited her over. She arrived with a rifle and asked him to hold onto it. The two started arguing when she brought up the incident earlier that morning, which is when she pointed the gun at Flores, who then grabbed it away from her and then she left.

The defendant mistakenly thought she had left the property and wasn’t aware she had gone into the victim’s house, Stout said, which was also stated during the defendant’s testimony on the stand.

A few minutes after she left, the defendant went to the victim’s house to see if Harper could hold onto the gun for him, since he wasn’t allowed to have a firearm. But when he got to the door, he said the victim struck him in the face with the butt of a handgun and then slammed the sliding door so hard it shattered the glass.

From there, the defendant said, it was the victim who grabbed the rifle and pointed it at Flores, which is when the gun went off and struck the victim in the neck. The victim continued to fight Flores, Stout said, which is when his client fired the second shot into the victim’s torso.

Stout also brought up the inconsistencies in Brown’s testimony, including that she did not own the rifle, which detectives later confirmed she did, and she denied saying she was the defendant’s girlfriend, even though she stated as much during the 911 call but could not recall multiple times during cross-examination.

The defense questioned other evidence as well, including the amount of glass that was found at the residence and how the glass was distributed. Stout said it appeared that more glass fragments were found outside the residence than inside, which could mean the victim was outside when he was shot. But the detective said it appeared to be a 50-50 split.

He also said the photos taken of his client did show fresh cuts on the suspect’s face that were covered by facial hair, as well as his waist near the beltline and abrasion on the suspect’s knee, which he said were from a physical struggle, not glass.

The state’s position 

Prosecutor Grace Deist said the defendant went to the victim’s home armed with a rifle because he was upset about his landlord getting in between an altercation with his female friend, while the victim never opened the door nor did he leave the residence that night. Instead, he was in the living room of his own residence with the door secured with a dowel and everyone was safe. It was then that Flores returned to his trailer to retrieve the rifle and opened fire.

The first rounds shattered the front sliding glass door, and at least two of the rounds struck the homeowner in the chest and neck, killing him instantly. 

After the shooting, the suspect called 911 to report he had “shot in self-defense” during an altercation, but when asked what the fight was over, the suspect said he didn’t know.

Flores did not shoot during a struggle with the victim, Deist said. Instead, the defendant shot a man at close range with a .22-caliber long rifle “long after the fight was over.” 

Closing arguments 

Stout said that after the woman confronted his client over being with another woman, she pointed the gun at him and he wrestled it away and then she left, which led to the first misunderstanding. This led Flores to believe she had left the property that night and would call the police. If she did that, then the officers would find him with the rifle she brought over, so he took the rifle to the victim’s house to have him hold on to it.

Stout also said it was the victim who was actively shooting, which led his client to believe his life was in danger, which justified the shooting.  

Had Flores not done that, Stout said, his client would have died that night.

Prosecutor Lane Wood said the jury had all of the evidence needed to come to a verdict, including the statements of the witnesses, the calls to 911 and the statements from the defendant. That included testimony from a key witness, the victim’s daughter, that was corroborated by not only the evidence but was consistent with what transpired during the 911 call. 

She was called to the stand a second time during closing arguments and said that her father remained inside when she first heard the glass shattering, and then she heard a scuffle inside the living room before hearing several more shots. She also said her father never left the residence but was inside during the 911 call.

The evidence did not support the defendant’s claim that the victim struck him with a handgun first, Wood said, since no firearm was found near the victim or in the living room when officers arrived. The presence of bullet casings found inside also corroborated that Flores was inside at some point during the shooting, which was also corroborated by the 911 call. The defendant shot him twice – once in the neck, once in the torso, the prosecutor said. 

During the full eight minutes between the time the defendant’s friend left the trailer and the time the shots were fired, as recorded on the 911 call, Flores was not in an altercation with anyone, since the victim and his daughter, along with the female friend, were all inside the victim’s home with the sliding door locked. So Flores was alone — which called into question the defendant’s claim he shot in self-defense.

“This cannot be self-defense. This cannot be justified. Those were intentional acts that killed Mr. Harper.” 

The verdict

The jury had three options for the murder charge. The first was to find the defendant acted in self-defense and was not guilty of murder. The second was to find that imperfect self-defense applied if they believed the defendant had an unreasonable fear of imminent harm or was facing an unreasonable amount of fear, which would result in a lesser charge. The final option was to find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder.

After roughly three hours of deliberations Wednesday, the jury returned and found Flores guilty of all five charges. He is scheduled to appear Sept. 3 for sentencing.

St. George News reporter Jeff Richards contributed to this report.

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