New Fairfield resident Robert Bell held back tears on the witness stand Thursday as he described how he shot and killed his wife Svetlana Bell at their home in December, 2012.
Bell, who his on trail and facing a first-degree manslaughter charge for the shooting, said he, his wife, and their then 17-year old daughter Elizabeth Bell were preparing to watch a movie shortly before the shooting occurred.
Bell said his wife became enraged while making popcorn in the kitchen and approached him with a knife.
“I felt fear throughout my body like an electric shock,” a visibly upset Bell said on the stand as he recounted the events of that evening. “I thought I was going to be killed. I thought she was going to stick the knife into me. I took the gun out of my pocket and fired as fast as I could.”
Bell said he had his handgun in a holster in his pants pocket at the time. Bell said he routinely carried the gun on his person, especially when they were going to places that allowed people to have concealed weapons.
Bell, who has a license to carry a weapon and is a certified pistol instructor with the NRA, said he was “shocked and horrified” after he saw his wife, who was shot three times during the incident, fall to the ground.
“I tried to help her,” said Bell. “I was hoping she was alright. I picked up the phone and called 911.”
Bell described their 19 year marriage prior to the shooting as mostly happy, with the couple spending most of their time together and going on family vacations and camping trips.
“We spent all of our time together,” he said. “We were a family.”
Bell added, however, that his wife would sometimes became engulfed in fits of rage, fits that he said would occur sometimes not for several months, or sometimes several times a week.
“To me what seemed a minor annoyance would result in a screaming rage,” he said. “I asked her many times to get help with her anger.”
Bell said on the witness stand that while his wife had never attacked him with a knife prior to that night, Svetlana Bell had thrown dishes, a hammer and the thanksgiving turkey at him in the past.
“When ever she picked up something as a weapon in the past, she used it,” he said.
Bell, whose testimony about that night was similar to his daughter Elizabeth Bell’s testimony earlier in the trial, is expected to continue his testimony later this afternoon.