The jury is hearing conflicting claims about the fateful shooting in Boonesville

But before a jury could hear those reports, they received a quick lesson on gun safety from a forensic scientist.

“Don’t point the firearm at anything you don’t want to shoot at,” said Lauren Claytor, firearms supervisor with the Virginia Department of Forensic Services.

Claytor was among several witnesses interviewed about gun safety – the key to unraveling how a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson double-action revolver exploded in Forbes' hands on June 23, killing Dudley, his once-distant cousin, and Dudley's mother, permanently incapacitated three teenage girls.

Claytor testified that it takes 12.4 pounds of force to fire the pistol when it is uncocked and only 2.9 pounds of force when it is cocked.

The prosecutor asked whether the gun could be fired without sustained pressure on the trigger.

“That wouldn’t be the case,” Claytor replied.

But Gary Pleasants, a defense witness and retired Charlottesville police lieutenant who now manages a large gun store in the Shenandoah Valley, lent credence to the defense's argument that it was Dudley who reached for the gun and caused it to fire.

“If it is pulled against the finger, it will discharge,” Pleasants testified.

Prosecutors tried to ask Pleasants to recite the “Four Rules of Gun Safety,” particularly No. 3: Keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot. But on a day when 14 people were due to testify, Judge Cheryl Higgins objected to that inquiry.

Forbes has been charged with reckless handling of a firearm, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and aggravated malicious wounding – the latter of which could result in him being sentenced to 20 years to life in prison if found guilty.

Ample evidence suggested that the dispute had been simmering for months between Forbes, 62, and Dudley, 37, over who owned a family property on Boonesville Road in western Albemarle County, a witness accused the wife of the shooting Forbes for initiating the violence that day.

“Thomas' wife slapped Krystal and that started an argument,” said Travis Lambert, Dudley's friend.

He said the two women stopped fighting after Forbes fired a warning shot into the air, but Forbes continued to point the gun at Dudley.

“He kept pointing the gun at the facial area,” Lambert testified.

“She had her arms stretched out in front of her face,” Lambert said. “Maybe she pushed his arm to the side.”

After Lambert emotionally recounted the moment the gun went off, he was asked what Forbes did next.

“He kept waving the gun and saying, ‘She deserves it. She deserves it.' “He said it three times,” Lambert testified.

Lambert's mother, Melissa Lambert, testified that while standing on a doormat at the entrance to the house on the property, she made a similar statement, including claiming that Forbes fired a warning shot first.

But when it was the defendant's turn to testify, defense attorney Scott Goodman called three neighbors – Jane Morris, Daniel Morris and Peter McCauley – each of whom said they had heard only one gunshot that morning.

Albemarle County Police Sgt. Jordan DeLange testified that he found a spent shell casing and four live cartridges in the five-shot bullet made by Forbes, whom he described as cooperative.

The defense called Forbes' wife, Deborah, who said she and her husband had come to the property that day with good news for the tenant living there. The tenant is an elderly relative of the property's previous owner, and the Forbeses had come to tell him he could stay on the property.

According to Deborah Forbes, it was Frazier and Lambert who instigated the violence.

“They came running up to us and said they were going to beat our asses,” she testified.

In a plaintive voice, she told jurors that, not knowing she was Lambert's mother, she asked the woman in the house if she could use the phone to call 911.

“And she said no,” said a tearful Deborah Forbes, denying that she threw the first punch or any punch at all.

Frazier, she said, assaulted her by grabbing her ponytail, pulling it down and hitting her.

“She beat me badly,” she said. “She folded me like a napkin.”

She said she begged Dudley to relent and told her husband's cousin that she had recently suffered a stroke.

“She said, 'Like I give a shit.'”

The defense presented about a dozen photos of the various injuries Deborah Forbes suffered on June 23, including what appeared to be bruises on her face, arms, neck and torso, as well as a black eye that appeared on her According to the statement, development began immediately.

She said her husband regularly carried a gun to shoot vermin, particularly snakes and possums, and the beating only stopped when the gun showed up. She said Frazier tried to wrestle the gun from her husband's hands after tearing the man's shirt and breaking his glasses.

“He didn’t shoot Krystal,” she testified. “She tried to take the gun out of his hand.”

At times, Deborah Forbes verbally wavered – which she blamed on her stroke – and the judge repeatedly begged her to stop adding additional information to her answers.

“She has a tendency to go off topic,” the judge noted.

But an initially digressive topic later explained how the unrest around the country began.

Family patriarch James MacAuthur Shifflett died in 2022 without a legal will. About two weeks before the shooting, a lawsuit was decided in favor of Deborah Forbes, alleging that Dudley's mother and others attempted to file a false will that would have increased her share of the estate.

She remembered happier times on the property, before the Shiffletts, the Morrises and the Fraziers – including Krystal Frazier Dudley – drifted apart.

“We used to get together at Christmas time,” she said.