SAN BERNARDINO - An Ontario woman who shot and killed her husband nearly four years ago spent the day on the witness stand Thursday in her murder trial.
In wide-ranging testimony in San Bernardino Superior Court, Mia Joleen Gonzales detailed the deterioration of her relationship with Abel Gonzales, and said she didn't intend to hurt her husband the night she fatally shot him.
Mia Gonzales, 36, testified that her husband beat her severely during an argument shortly after midnight on Oct. 27, 2007, and she feared for her safety and the safety of her three daughters.
She said she retrieved a revolver from a dresser drawer and pointed it at her husband, but he continued to fight her and they fell together onto their bed.
Mia Gonzales said she tried to get up from the bed and the weapon inadvertently fired. She said she was "almost 100 percent sure" that her finger wasn't on the trigger.
"I said, `Babe, are you OK?' but he didn't answer me," Gonzales testified. "He just made this weird gurgling noise."
The bullet struck Abel Gonzales below the chin and entered his brain, killing the 44-year-old state parole agent within seconds.
Mia Gonzales' account of her husband's death came after she spent more than an hour on the witness stand explaining how her marriage changed drastically over the span of 10 years.
She said her husband's attitude seemed to change the night of their wedding in 1997. He became
mean and critical of her, and the abuse worsened over the years, Mia Gonzales testified.
"It was hard," she testified. "I had to make a lot of adjustments."
When the couple's son died within minutes of his birth, Mia Gonzales said her husband blamed her.
"He was very angry," she testified. "He wanted a little boy, and he didn't handle it very well."
The couple moved into a home in the 1900 block of South Almond Street in Ontario in early 2007.
Mia Gonzales said that by June of that year she'd decided to leave her husband. The couple was rarely intimate, and she said her husband also was physically abusive.
When she told her husband of her plans to leave, he responded by opening up to her about his past, she testified.
"It was the beginning of his relinquishing information in hopes that he could keep me there with him," she said.
Abel Gonzales spent the next five to seven evenings disclosing secrets to his wife, including the disclosure that over a four-year period in his childhood he was sexually abused by an older boy.
He also said he had a sexual affair with a male roommate in the years prior to his marriage. Mia Gonzales said she believed her husband occasionally saw the ex-roommate during their marriage.
Mia Gonzales said that after her husband's disclosures, she felt her marriage was a lie.
"I didn't know who I was married to," she said.
She decided not to leave her husband because she felt sorry for him, but she also became severely depressed and attempted suicide twice by cutting herself, she testified.
She said her husband also seemed suicidal. She said she once saw him sitting on the edge of his bed holding a gun to his head.
During her cross-examination of Mia Gonzales, Deputy District Attorney Mary Izadi sought to paint Mia Gonzales as a liar.
Mia Gonzales said that friends and family members often saw bruising on her body from physical altercations with her husband.
But when they asked her about the markings, she would lie and say they weren't caused by her husband, she testified.
Mia Gonzales is set to retake the witness stand on Monday.
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