His wife was a sometimes-prostitute, a "wild girl" and "drama queen" who would taunt him with graphic photos of her sex partners, but she was also the beautiful love of his life, the 34-year-old Little Rock man accused of her death told police.
"My first love and I've been married three times and ain't ever had a love like her," Deshaun "Wiccit" Scott told Little Rock detectives in November 2012 about eight hours after the body of 33-year-old Lacrisa Renee Foot was found on a city street. The mother of five was shot and killed about a month after the couple's second wedding anniversary.
Two police interviews with Scott were played in court Tuesday for Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen, who decided the interviews could be admitted as evidence into Scott's first-degree murder trial next week.
Scott initially told police he had been with Foot the night she was killed, but they had gone their separate ways after quarreling at the Elevations nightclub on Colonel Glenn Road because another man had been flirting with her.
They'd both been drinking, Scott told investigators, and she had been too angry to leave with him. He said she caused a scene outside the club when he tried to get her to go, so he drove home without her.
He had not seen her since, Scott told police in an approximately 41-minute recorded interview. He said that the only time he got Foot to answer her phone after they split up, she told him she was about to get into a car with some men and might have sex with them.
But in his second recorded statement -- conducted 30 minutes after the first questioning session concluded -- Scott sounded like a different man as he told a different story about what happened to Foot.
He said what had really happened was that Foot had been accidentally shot inside the car during their argument and that he had pushed the unconscious woman out onto the street in a panic.
"I didn't mean to do this, man," he said. "I swear it's the truth. I wouldn't have never did nothing to hurt my wife."
His speech, which had been calm, deep and resonant in the first recording, was rushed, and his voice sounded much more emotional in the second interview lasting about 12 minutes. Sometimes he sounded like he was crying.
The reason for the change in demeanor, Sgt. Jordan Neufer testified, was because police had just shown Scott photographs of blood and possible brain matter on the borrowed beige Cadillac Catera that Scott said he been driving the night Foot was killed.
Detectives told him they didn't believe his story, Neufer told the judge.
"We knew something had happened at least by the car. I don't think he realized the blood was on the car," Neufer testified. "When we showed him the pictures, I think he realized ... what it was."
Scott told police that Foot was shot as he moved a .38-caliber revolver, which she'd left in the car, away from her during their argument. But she hit his hand, the gun fired, and she collapsed, he told police. He couldn't rouse her, Scott said.
"I grabbed the gun. She hit the gun. The gun was cocked and everything already and the gun went off," he told Neufer and detective Kevin Simpson. "She just laid back in the seat, and I'm like, 'Baby, Baby, Baby.' She didn't respond to me."
When he couldn't revive Foot, Scott said, he pushed her out of the car and drove off. He said he threw the gun off a bridge into the Arkansas River.
"I just stopped the car. I just pushed her out on the side of the road and drove on off," an emotional Scott said. "All I could do last night was pray somebody came and picked her up and took her to the hospital. I swear to God, that's the complete truth. I was scared. I don't want my kids to hate me, man."
Scott, who was on parole at the time, was arrested after he described how Foot was killed. He is the father of her youngest child, a 3-year-old daughter.
Foot's body was discovered in the 7800 block of Katherine Street, less than a block from the home she shared with Scott. A passer-by who found her called police.
The recordings were played for the judge because Scott's attorney, Bill James, challenged the legality of the police interrogation.
Deputy prosecutor Emily Abbott told the judge that all of the evidence and testimony showed that Scott -- then a 32-year-old high school graduate taking college classes -- knew what he was doing when he twice waived his rights to a lawyer and answered the detectives' questions.
The prosecutor said Scott had not even been a suspect before his first interview, which was conducted after he had approached police and asked to talk to them.
After hearing evidence and examining a Miranda rights waiver signed by Scott, the judge cleared prosecutors to use the recordings, which together total about 52 minutes, in next week's trial. With prior convictions for drugs, domestic violence against another wife and firearm possession, the former parolee faces a potential life sentence.
Metro on 07/09/2014