Friday, December 12, 2008 10:14 PM CST
Abernathy: 'She was trying to hurt me'
By DAVE FOPAY, Staff Writer
dfopay@jg-tc.com
CHARLESTON — Jason Abernathy said he returned to the home he and Gina Giberson shared wanting to at least to get a change of clothes and possibly to make up after a fight they had.
He ended up seeing a strange man running from the back door and then having Giberson swing a baseball bat once he was inside, he said.
Testifying in his own defense at his trial Thursday, Abernathy said the bat hit his raised left hand before Giberson swung a second time, when he was able to take the bat from her and then hit her with his fist.
“I didn’t have a chance to ask her anything,” he said. “She was trying to hurt me.”
Abernathy on Thursday gave the same account of what happened early on the morning of Oct. 16, 2007, as police said he gave right after the incident. He claimed Giberson fell after he hit her, hitting her head first on a counter and then on a table.
He further explained her head injuries by saying he twice dropped her, because of his own injured hand, on some concrete steps trying to get her to a car.
Abernathy is using self defense against a charge of aggravated domestic battery. He’s accusing of beating Giberson with the bat at their shared home at 211 Fourth St., Charleston, leading to multiple head injuries that required hospitalization and rehabilitation.
Defense attorney Monroe McWard also had Abernathy give his explanation for the roughly two-hour gap between when Giberson was injured and when he arrived with her at Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center. Abernathy said he first started driving in the wrong direction, then got to a location near Loxa where the car ran out of gas.
He said he first tried to call his brother on a friend’s cell phone he had with him, but the phone wouldn’t work. Some time later, he said, he heard his own cell phone, which he didn’t know was in the car, ring from inside the glove compartment.
That call was from his brother, whom he’d called earlier to tell what happened, and he then had to wait for his brother to bring gas for the car. When McWard asked why Abernathy didn’t try to get an ambulance or other help at any time during the incident, Abernathy replied that he was “scared” and “panicked.”
Abernathy said what led up to the confrontation began about two days before, when Giberson got upset when he wanted to take her car to travel out of town for work and she made him return it to the house. Instead of going back home after work, he spent the next day or so sleeping in his truck or visiting friends, he said.
“I was in and out of the house so much,” Abernathy said of arguments with Giberson. His last stop was at a friend’s who lived near his and Giberson’s home, he said, and he decided to walk home from there, and that’s when he saw the man running out the door.
He also said he saw candles burning inside the house when he entered after seeing the man, a possible indirect reference to the fire that destroyed the house later that day. No one is charged with setting the fire, which earlier testimony indicated was started intentionally.
Abernathy also described other incidents when he said Giberson displayed violent behavior, saying he saw that over the years he’s known her, not just since their romantic relationship began about three years ago. He said she “took a turn for the worse” shortly after they began living together, blaming her drug use.
“It would be a different Gina,” he said. “She was impossible.”
And while Abernathy said the night Giberson was injured was the first time there was any violence between the two of them, fights between her and her sons were so frequent “I couldn’t tell you how many” there were. He also said Giberson once told him she bit her ex-husband and threatened another boyfriend with a knife.
Abernathy’s testimony didn’t finish Thursday and will continue when the trial resumes today. The defense might call other witnesses, but Circuit Judge Gary Jacobs said he still wants to send the case to the jury for deliberations today.
State’s Attorney Steve Ferguson rested his case earlier Thursday. The prosecution’s last witness was Charleston police Detective James Blagg, who played a video recording of his interview with Abernathy a few hours after his arrest.
Abernathy’s account to Blagg mirrored his testimony, but Abernathy was arrested because of the extent of Giberson’s injuries and other reasons, the detective said.
“The story he represented to me did not make sense,” Blagg said.
Contact Dave Fopay at dfopay@jg-tc.com or 348-5733.
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Gina's Brother wrote on Dec 11, 2008 3:08 PM: