Rachel Revehl
rrevehl@news-press.com
Amy Boscarino was fatally shot in the neck on May 17, 2008, in the living room of her San Carlos Park home.
On Monday, jurors determined her death was the result of a calculated decision by her boyfriend, Mark Schack, who they found guilty of second-degree murder after deliberating for 55 minutes.
Schack faces life in prison. He will be sentenced Feb. 1.
Boscarino’s family was present throughout the trial, taking notes and closely watching Schack.
Schack never denied responsibility, but said it was a tragic accident.
“I feel horrible about what happened, every day,” Schack said. “There’s never a day I don’t feel horrible for ever owning a gun or ever touching a gun.”
Schack, 46, said that Monday morning, when he took the stand in his own defense.
He testified he had been cleaning a rifle around 2 that morning because he and Boscarino had planned to go to the gun range later that day. Boscarino, 32, was in the living room cleaning — something not uncommon for her, Schack said.
While adjusting the scope, he said, the gun slipped and fired. He didn’t know there was a round in the chamber, he said, and to this day still isn’t sure how it got there. He hadn’t grown up with guns, and said he only picked up the hobby six months earlier.
Prosecutors contend the angle at which Boscarino was shot doesn’t match Schack’s version of events.
Defense attorneys Kati Calvo and Brett Gelman played for the jury the taped interview Schack had with sheriff’s Det. Michael Carr the morning of the shooting. Schack sobbed throughout the interview, and was at times unintelligible.
Several witnesses testified Schack was extremely depressed in the days following Boscarino’s death; he had attempted suicide and was placed under involuntary emergency psychiatric evaluation. But prosecutors argued he was more concerned about an impending arrest than losing Amy.
Wearing a black suit and dark-rimmed glasses, Schack was soft-spoken on the witness stand, his voice at times wavering with emotion.
He was a 35-year-old limousine company owner and she was a 22-year-old guest manager at a hotel when they met in 1998. Within a year, they moved in together, and by the next year, they relocated to Florida, purchasing a home in San Carlos Park in 2005.
Soon after, he said they both purchased life insurance policies to ensure Boscarino could afford to keep the house in case anything ever happened to him.
It was not a motivation to shoot her, Schack testified, and neither were the financial problems the two were experiencing. And although he asked his sister to inquire about the insurance policy a few days after Boscarino’s death, it was only to help pay for funeral arrangements, Schack said. When he learned her family was paying those expenses, he never applied to collect the money.
“I don’t want the money,” Schack said. “I want Amy back, alive.”
Prosecutor Dan Feinberg pressed Schack on whether Boscarino’s reticence to set a marriage date might have been causing the couple tension.
Schack said it hadn’t.
Feinberg focused also on several oddities and inconsistencies in Schack’s actions and statements following the shooting. For example, he put the magazine back into the gun safe before calling 911. And when he did call 911, he spent more than a minute explaining what had happened and why he’d been handling a gun before telling the dispatcher Boscarino was shot and he needed an ambulance.
Other witnesses testified that Schack made inconsistent statements about what happened. Schack countered that he was in shock, and they were all either mistaken or had misunderstood him.
No comments:
Post a Comment