Grant Rodgers

grodgers@dmreg.com

Gabriel Coco admitted that he was drinking last October before shooting two men in a McDonald's parking lot — leaving one permanently paralyzed below his chest.

"I didn't want this to happen," Coco told investigators in a videotaped interview played for a jury Tuesday. Several times, he told the investigators that he was drunk and agitated by the two 18-year-olds' belligerence inside the Ankeny restaurant before he approached them outside with his Beretta handgun.

A defense attorney for the U.S. Army veteran argued before a jury that the outburst of violence Oct. 24, 2015, was, at its core, the result of Coco's ongoing struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Coco, 37, served as a tank driver and a gunner on the roof of Humvees, surviving at least three blasts from improvised explosive devices and a traumatic brain injury during his tours of duty in Iraq, defense attorney Timothy McCarthy said.

"He saw hundreds blown up, dismembered, injured, loss of limbs," he said. "He saw innocent civilians killed and children. It was a horrific experience."

A Polk County jury began hearing evidence Tuesday in the trial against Coco, who faces charges including attempted murder and willful injury from the shooting that injured Nickolas Culver and Justin Phongsavanh.

Both testified that Culver was intentionally throwing a fake tantrum in the restaurant, swearing at a worker behind the counter and throwing a hamburger on the ground because it had pickles on it that he did not order. Phongsavanh filmed his friend on his cellphone camera so the two could upload it afterward to social media.

In the interview with investigators shown to the jury, Coco said the stunt angered him and he followed the two out of the fast-food restaurant because "there's no reason for that." But Assistant County Attorney Michael Hunter said that Coco's own words in the hours after the shooting showed that he chose to get involved and that there was "no way" he had to shoot either man.

"He fully formed specific intent to inject himself in a beef that had nothing to do with him and he used insanely ridiculous disproportionate force," Hunter said in his opening statement.

The case is at least the second time this year that a veteran facing felony charges in Polk County has pointed to post-traumatic stress disorder and mental illness as an underlying factor that led to violence. Coco is specifically using a diminished responsibility defense, and is expected to call a Windsor Heights psychiatrist to testify as an expert witness.

A jury in April convicted Patrick William Kirwan, 31, of second-degree murder in the death of his south Des Moines neighbor. Attorneys representing Kirwan, who spent 15 months in Iraq, argued that the Army veteran was extremely paranoid and believed his neighbor was "informing" on him to the federal government.

McCarthy said in his opening that Coco returned from Iraq in 2005 and began receiving treatment from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs shortly after. He also told jurors that evidence would show Coco believed he was acting in self-defense when he fired the shots.

Phongsavanh, now 19, told jurors that Coco approached the two as they prepared to drive away. Coco had his handgun and asked the friends, "You think that was (expletive) funny" before striking Culver in the forehead with the handgun, Phongsavanh said.

Phongsavanh, who sat in a wheelchair, said that he was shot in the right arm while he was trying to get information from Coco's license plates. The bullet became lodged in his spine and surgeons were unable to remove it, he said. Culver, who was also struck by a bullet fragment that ricocheted during the shooting, said during his testimony that the incident had left permanent psychological injuries.

"I think I'll learn to live with it, knowing that I watched my best friend get gunned down," he said. "But I don't think it will ever go away."

Testimony is expected to continue in the trial Wednesday.