Weston Schools

Judge Patrick Taggart said that he considered Hainstock's age and background before sentencing. He said that he believes the teen can be rehabilitated, WISC-TV reported.

Defense attorneys had requested parole eligibility after 20 years while the state had requested 49 years with the date of eligibility being Sept.29, 2056 -- or 50 years after the shooting at Weston Schools, WISC-TV reported.

The jurors who convicted Hainstock said that they focused on the guns and ammunition that he brought to school and the number of shots fired in determining his intent to murder.

Juror Brian Ludolph, of Prairie du Sac, said on Friday the fact numerous shots were fired by Hainstock convinced them the student intended to kill Klang. Ludolph said that Hainstock bringing the guns and ammunition to school also played into their finding of intent.

Juror Diana Mielke, of North Freedom, said that the jury was initially split on whether Hainstock intended to kill Klang.

Mielke said that she was initially among the six who thought Hainstock didn't have intent to kill, but changed her mind after recalling Hainstock's lack of emotion during the trial.

On the morning of the shooting, Hainstock testified, he awoke feeling tired of being picked on at school and said to himself, "I have to get all of this to stop."

At school, he was stuffed into lockers, had his head dunked into toilets and was called a "fag" by his classmates, he said. As a result of the bullying, he attempted suicide three times.

His classmates' comments "cut a little deeper," he said, because at the age of 6, he was sexually molested by his 12-year-old stepbrother. He kept the alleged assaults a secret, he said.

Hainstock's father, Shawn Hainstock, cried as his son testified.

When he came home from school, Hainstock said, his parents forced him to do most of the housework. When he failed to do so, he was disciplined.

Hainstock testified that his father often kicked him and also used a wooden board called "the board of education" to spank him.

He said his father also refused to provide him with medication to help curb his attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

After loading his father's 20-gauge shotgun and .22-caliber revolver, he drove to school, hoping he could force Klang to listen to his problems, he said.

When he entered the school, he screamed, "Everyone get in the office. I'm not f---ing kidding!"

He said he didn't get flustered when the school's maintenance man, David Thompson, was able to grab the shotgun out of his hand. Hainstock said he reacted by pulling the handgun out of his pants.

When Klang turned the corner, Hainstock testified, he pointed the gun at him and said, "I ain't going to do nothing ... let's go to the office, I want to talk."

Hainstock said Klang agreed to talk to him in his office, but as they walked there, Klang grabbed him and the gun went off accidentally.

"The gun was caught in the clothing of my arm and when he pulled my arm it went off," Hainstock testified.

He said he then aimed the gun at Klang's arm and fired "so he would let go of him."

After an accidental third shot fired, Hainstock said he was in shock.

"I didn't think Mr. Klang was going to die ... I hoped not," Hainstock said. "I didn't plan to hurt nobody."

The last witness to testify was Hainstock?s grandmother, Irene Hainstock, who said Eric called her from jail after his arrest.

"What have you done," she recalled asking her grandson. "I don't know, grandma. Something snapped in my head," was the response.

Other defense witnesses included five students at Weston who saw Eric enter the school with a shotgun and saw it taken away from him. None remembered hearing him say, "I'm here to (expletive) kill somebody," as one witness recalled.

On cross examination, however, most said they weren't sure they could hear everything that was being said that day.

In his own testimony, Hainstock said he brought the shotgun and pistol to the school to make people listen to him and did not intend to kill Klang.

Hainstock said he needed the weapons — a 20-gauge shotgun and a .22-caliber revolver — "because they would be scared," he said, referring to people at the school. "If they were scared they'd listen, hopefully."

Hainstock, 16, testified unemotionally as the first witness in the defense case after prosecutors rested their case Wednesday morning.

Mounting frustration with his home life and with persistent taunting at school led him to the desperate action, he said, which he said was not intended to hurt anyone.

But after Klang grabbed him from behind at the school, Hainstock testified, the gun went off.

"It was accidental," he said. He heard a grunt from Klang, he said, who continued to hold him. Hainstock said a second shot, which struck Klang on the side of the head but did not penetrate his skull, was intended for Klang's arm, to get Klang to let go of him.

Hainstock said he underestimated the lethal power of the .22.

"I didn't think it would hurt nobody that bad because it was so little," he said.

The video, filmed just hours after the Sept. 29 shooting, shows Hainstock slouched in a Sauk County Sheriff's Department interview room with Klang's blood on his clothes. He tells detectives that he complained to Klang for three years about kids teasing him and calling him a "fag," but that Klang did nothing to stop them.

That morning after his parents left their home, he says in the video, he "was still ticked off" at various students and the principal.

According to the criminal complaint, Hainstock, then a 15-year-old freshman, went to school outside Cazenovia, about 65 miles northwest of Madison, with a shotgun and a revolver.

A janitor tore the shotgun away, and Hainstock pulled out the revolver, cocked it and got ready to fire, he tells detectives in the video.

He says Klang came toward him and asked him, 'What's going on?'"

"I'm like, 'I'm sick of you guys,'" he says in the interview.

He ordered Klang into an office, and as they turned to walk there, Klang jumped him, Hainstock says. He stuck his pistol under Klang's left armpit and fired three times, he says. Klang later died.

"I just freaked out," Hainstock says.

During testimony Monday afternoon in a Baraboo courtroom, teacher James Nowak recounted his own rising sense of tension with Hainstock, beginning with an incident on Sept, 14. That day, he said, Hainstock threw a metal stapler at him, narrowly missing his head and chipping the wall. When he returned to the classroom with Klang and Buildings and Grounds Director Phillip Rachuj, they found Hainstock holding a chair.

"He had a chair above his head and he looked like he was going to swing it at us," said Nowak.

Rachuj was able to take the chair from Hainstock, and he was suspended from school for three days.

She said Hainstock was a boy who sought attention, enjoyed playing the victim and often placed blame for his actions on others. Young said he was often teased by other students, but he picked on them in return.

Young testified that she was in the hall when Hainstock walked into the school but said she could not see him because of the decorations. She testified she heard Hainstock say "I'm going to (expletive) kill somebody."

17-year-old Samuel Brandt testified that he saw Hainstock get in pushing and shoving matches with other kids in the halls, that he often tormented younger students and tried to pick on older kids, who in turn picked on him.

18-year-old Kimberly Durst says others may have dished it out to Hainstock, but "he dished out right back."

Caitlyn Goldben, a freshman at Weston Schools last year, testified Saturday that Hainstock joined a conversation she had with a friend about a report on Columbine on Sept. 28. Hainstock is accused of murdering Principal John Klang the next morning.

Goldben said Hainstock asked what Columbine was. After he was told that students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 23 others at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999, he replied, "Oh."

Goldben said she was friends with Hainstock. Twice he asked her to homecoming, but she turned him down both times.

It was she who told Klang that Hainstock had the tobacco, she testified. During gym class on the day before the shooting, Hainstock approached her and pointed his finger at her like a gun, accusing her of snitching on him, she testified.

She said she feared him so she denied telling Klang. He then began complaining about Nowak again.

"He said he would throw a stapler at him again or shove marijuana down his throat," she said.

Then he got into the Columbine discussion, she said.

"Eric said, Oh.' Then he got quiet for a little bit and started talking about Mr. Nowak again," Goldben said.

Goldben said she told teachers about the conversation, but the district attorney didn't press her for details.

One of Hainstock's attorneys, Jon Helland, tried to defuse the testimony by asking Goldben if Hainstock had said Klebold and Harris were "stupid." Goldben said Hainstock said no such thing.

Custodian Dave Thompson testified he was talking with assistant football coach and social studies teacher Chuck Keller before school when they saw Hainstock walking across the parking lot with a shotgun raised.

Thompson said the teacher asked the 15-year-old freshman what he was doing with a gun in school and Hainstock replied, '"I'm here to (expletive) kill somebody." ' He then pointed the gun barrel to within inches of Keller's face.

Thompson ripped the gun away from him, telling him, "No, not in my school," he recalled. Hainstock then reached into his pocket, Thompson said.

Fearing the boy had another gun, Thompson ran outside with the shotgun, telling Keller to run.

After Thompson had taken the shotgun, Keller said that he tried to corner Hainstock in the entryway, but that the boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a .22 revolver.

Keller testified he had had Hainstock in class a year earlier. The boy was disruptive, touching other students and heckling him during his lectures, Keller said.

Hainstock was equal parts victim and instigator, he said, but the shenanigans didn't seem serious.

Hainstock's attorney, Rhoda Ricciardi, told jurors they should not convict him of first-degree murder because his actions were not intentional, but reckless. She said he told police he only meant to scare people.

She said Hainstock was upset with kids calling him a "fag." Ricciardi said his stepbrother sexually abused him when Hainstock was 6, and that his father abused him and refused to give him medication for attention deficit disorder.

District Attorney Pat Barrett maintained that Hainstock's anger toward Klang had been building for two weeks before homecoming.

She noted Klang kicked Hainstock out of school for three days after Hainstock threw a stapler at his special education teacher. Klang also gave Hainstock an in-school suspension after Klang found chewing tobacco in the boy's backpack.

Pointing her finger at jurors like a pistol, Barrett also pledged they would hear statements Hainstock gave to investigators in which he said he pulled the trigger on Klang on purpose and testimony from a school janitor who heard Hainstock say he was at the school to kill someone.

Barrett also said Hainstock brought 50 cartridges for the revolver to school.

Librarian Kay Amborn testified Friday that Hainstock, 16, seemed "proud" a week later on Sept. 21 when he saw a story about the incident published in the Reedsburg Independent, showed it to several other students and asked Amborn to make a copy of it for him. She declined.

"He said he wanted a copy for his dad, because his dad didn't get the newspaper," Amborn testified.

The judge rejected the additional charge, saying it would violate Hainstock's right to a fair trial and would be prejudicial. He also cited concerns that Hainstock's defense wouldn't have time to prepare a defense against the charge, with the trial set to begin in under a week.

"We have eight business days between now and the day we pick a jury and go to trial," said Rhoda Ricciardi, one of the Madison-based attorneys representing 16-year-old Hainstock. "And now we are also supposed to defend against an attempted homicide? If that's not prejudice, sir, I don't know what is."

Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett said she previously mentioned the possibility of additional charges to Hainstock's defense team, but only recently received the transcripts of prior testimony necessary to go forward with the additional charge. She said there is no new evidence defense attorneys must study.

"The court finds that the officers were careful to make sure that this juvenile understood his rights, could have his parents notified if he wanted them to be notified and a review of the recording disclosed a juvenile who, although he may have had educational shortcomings in certain areas, demonstrated an ability to recognize his rights and to proceed without an attorney or his parents present," he wrote.

Lohr said before asking any questions, he read with Hainstock a card advising him of three constitutional rights, including his right to remain silent and his right to an attorney. Hainstock initialed each of the points and said he could not afford an attorney, he said.

Barrett told the court Hainstock began stating his Miranda rights even before the officer went over the card with him.

"I have the right to remain silent," she quoted him. "Anything I say can be used against me."

In defense arguments, Ricciardi pointed out that investigators knew Hainstock was a year behind in school and has learning disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Legal precedents have established that law officers interrogating a juvenile have a responsibility to have the child repeat their understanding of their rights back to the officer, and Lohr failed to do that, she said.

Despite the fact he said he didn't have the money for an attorney, the investigators did not explain to him how he could have one represent him, Ricciardi said.

Ricciardi said Feagles' role in giving the Miranda warning was rushing Hainstock through signing it without giving him time to think.

"Now you've agreed to talk to us, let's talk," she characterized Feagles' words that morning.

In her final arguments, Barrett said suppression of a defendant's statement is only appropriate when there is evidence of coercion by police. That did not happen when Hainstock was interviewed by Lohr and Feagles, she said.

"I don't think the court will find any improper police pressure or tactics," Barrett said.

But Hainstock was an immature and troubled boy in a situation he was not equipped to handle, Ricciardi said.

"You have two adult detectives in this room with a very young boy," she said. "This kid has his rights rammed down his throat with no effort to determine if he understood them."

Shawn Hainstock made no secret of his tears Thursday after a Sauk County Circuit Court hearing for his 16-year-old son, Eric, who is charged with killing the principal of Weston School in September.

"I'm concerned (Eric) might say the wrong thing (in an adult prison) and somebody would hurt him," Shawn Hainstock said, tears in his eyes. "Somebody would kill him, and that would be that."

In his first public interview since the shooting, Shawn Hainstock said he visits his son in the Sauk County Jail every day or two. "He kind of breaks down and cries a lot," he said.

Sauk County Circuit Judge Patrick Taggart's decision last month that the younger Hainstock be tried as an adult was a "tragedy," Hainstock said. "My heart's been tore out," he said. "That just about killed me."

"Nobody knows him like we do," Shawn Hainstock said. "They don't realize how loving a boy he is. He can be saved."

But he said his son is "getting railroaded."

In written arguments filed Wednesday, Barrett asked Sauk County Circuit Court Judge Patrick Taggart to reject the defense motion and allow a videotaped interview of Hainstock, recorded only a few hours after the shooting, to be used as evidence. The defense has provided no details of how Hainstock was denied his constitutional right to remain silent, she wrote.

The video is vital to the case because Barrett says he told investigators he purposefully shot Klang in the leg, chest and head during a confrontation in the school early on Sept. 29.