As she wept uncontrollably from the witness stand, the Queens woman who claims she blew away her abusive hubby in self-defense today described in shocking detail how she pumped 11 bullets into him after he “pointed” a gun at her head.
A crying Barbara Sheehan, 50, who is on trial in Queens Supreme Court for allegedly murdering her retired-cop husband Raymond in 2008, clutched her chest and even covered her eyes as she testified that she shot him because she feared being killed.
“He picked up the gun and pointed it at my head,” said Sheehan.
During the reenactment, Sheehan even refused to hold one of the guns, a .38-caliber revolver, she used to kill her husband, saying it would make her sick.
Prosecutors said Sheehan and her husband were six to 10 feet apart at the time of the shooting. They said Sheehan executed her husband by shooting him 11 times with two guns while he was shaving in his bathroom.
But Sheehan said she shot him in self-defense after he threatened to kill her and pointed a gun in her direction during an argument over her refusal to go to Florida with him.
“He was picking up the gun and aiming it at me. … He said, ‘I’m going to f–king kill you. I took the gun I had in my hand and shot him before he shot me.”
Sheehan, who was holding a gun at the time of the argument, pulled the trigger five times at her husband even though she claims she’d never shot a gun before.
“I wanted to help him,” she said. “I felt really bad.”
That’s when Sheehan said she picked up the gun her husband had dropped.
“He was screaming at me. … He was reaching for [the gun],” she recalled. “I got to it before he did. He was trying to reach for it … so I shot him.
“I shot until I didn’t feel threatened and he wasn’t screaming.”
Prosecutors pointed out that Sheehan’s husband was completely unarmed the moment she fired another six bullets, killing him.
Before the reenactment before the jury, Sheehan refused to hold one of the guns she used.
“No, I don’t want to,” Sheehan said, as she started to sob uncontrollably from the witness stand.
On several occasions, Assistant DA Debra Pomodore asked Sheehan to show the jury how she held the gun.
Pomodore placed the gun on the witness stand.
“Does this have to be there?” she asked.
“It’s part of evidence,” said Queens State Supreme Court Justice Barry Kron.
Sheehan then described how she took the gun with her when she approached him as he prepared to shave in the bathroom.
“I had it in my right hand near my side,” she said. “He was in the bathroom. All I could see was his face, his eyes and the gun. I don’t want to do this. I’m going to get sick physically.”
At one point, she covered her eyes with her hands as she tried to talk.
The DA also played a 911 call, with the jury out of the room, in which her sister Robin dialed cops. In the background, Sheehan was heard saying, “He was laughing at me. Boom! Boom! Boom!”
When asked about the 911 call and the laughing accusation, Sheehan said, “No, I don’t remember.”
Earlier in the day, prosecutors said Sheehan had written an odd letter to her husband’s employer requesting his life insurance information just days after the murder, saying he’d “passed away.”
“My husband passed away on February 18, 2008,” Sheehan wrote in the letter only three days after she was released from Rikers Island.
Sheehan penned the handwritten letter asking to turn over the insurance funds to her children Jennifer and Raymond.
“Didn’t you benefit financially from her husband after you shot and killed him?” said Pomodore before she showed Sheehan three copies of checks written out to her from her children to pay off the mortgage and equity loans for her Howard Beach home.
The letter read: “My husband passed away on February 18, 2008. Please forward life insurance information to Barbara Sheehan, 98-08 158th Avenue, Howard Beach, NY.”
Never did Sheehan mention in the letter that her husband been shot and that she’d been arrested.
The DA’s office said Sheehan’s son wrote a check for $199,655.75 to GMAC to pay off the home equity loan and daughter wrote two separate checks for $65,000 and $52,806 to Citibank.
Raymond, who retired as a cop in 2002, helped pay for their jet-setting lifestyle by earning $120,000 a year from a full-time position with UBS Financial Services, in addition to his police pension.