Accused murderer was unconscious during shooting, attorney says
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — The man accused of fatally shooting a cabdriver in Redwood City more than six years ago suffered from a medical condition that caused him to go unconscious during the shooting, his defense attorney said Wednesday.
The unusual defense strategy emerged during opening statements in the trial of Lousa Mataele, 37, who is accused of killing 21-year-old Davinder Singh and wounding another man during what San Mateo County prosecutors say was a robbery attempt inside Singh’s taxi.
Defense attorney Gerritt Rutgers told the jury that “we will never know with any degree of certainty what happened in that cab,” because Mataele does not remember the shooting and the other man, Jaime Torres, was too drunk to recall exactly what transpired.
Rutgers told the jury that Mataele, a former Menlo Park handyman, suffers from frontal lobe seizures — a unique form of epilepsy that can cause a person to go unconscious for minutes at a time. The attorney confirmed outside of court he believes Mataele was unconscious during the shooting.
