[8/26/04]The defendant in a manslaughter trial lived in fear of the 20-year-old he’s accused of shooting near Vicksburg High School last September, witnesses said Wednesday.

“This was all done in self-defense,” Clyde Ellis, attorney for Walter Jefferson, said before calling teachers and others to the witness stand on the trial’s third day.

Jurors may deliberate this afternoon whether to convict Jefferson, 20, of manslaughter in the death of O’Dare Lee Earl Mims, who was 20.

The state rested its case after presenting eyewitnesses to the single shot fired from the car Jefferson was driving into the chest of Mims, who had rushed up to the vehicle as the school day was ending on Sept. 20.

Assistant District Attorney John Bullard also presented witnesses who linked the weapon found with Jefferson to the fatal wound Mims, a former VHS student, received.

Ouside the courtroom, an investigation was under way after a witness said indirect threats had been made against her. Warren County Circuit Judge Frank Vollor ordered Sheriff Martin Pace to follow up on a statement by Karmen Richards, who said she had been Jefferson’s girlfriend during the time leading up to the shooting and that she had seen Mims try to intimidate Jefferson.

During her testimony, Ellis asked her whether she had been threatened. Richards responded she had heard that “they were going to get me,” but did not know who had made the statement.

During his opening statement Ellis said Mims had issued death threats against Jefferson and that gunshots had been fired at Jefferson from a car driven by Mims and a friend of his within weeks of the fatal shooting.

Jefferson was a VHS student, and two of his former teachers testified he had reason to fear Mims. One, 26-year social studies teacher Ed Wong, said Jefferson had reported being beaten up and harassed as the school year started. Wong said he directed Jefferson to report the matter immediately to the school principal or to the police officer stationed at the school and that he believed Jefferson had done so.

“There was a pain with him,” Wong said of Jefferson when Jefferson volunteered the information to him, during a conversation they had in a school hallway during class. “I could tell he was very serious.”

The second teacher, Marian Banks, said she had taught Jefferson for two years and he had confided to her one morning that he was scared of some “guys who had been jumping on him.” She requested and obtained a security-guard escort for Jefferson as he walked to his car.

Also testifying was Jefferson’s older brother, Rodney, 28, who said shots had been fired at Walter Jefferson from a car speeding down Poplar Street outside his apartment one night. He alleged the shots were a continuation of a fight that had occurred earlier that night outside a Clay Street restaurant involving himself and friends of Mims’.

Rodney Jefferson said Mims and one or more friends of his had been ganging up on his younger brother.

“It’s pretty easy to defend yourself from one person,” he said, adding that for one person to defend himself against “two or three people, it’s going to be pretty difficult.”

The trial began with jury selection Monday and attorneys for both sides predicted it would last a week. Jefferson faces a maximum term of 20 years if convicted of manslaughter and three years if convicted of a separate felony count, possession of a firearm on school property.