Alexander DelToro didn’t mean to kill his mother when he pulled out his gun.
Sitting in front of a Broward jury Monday morning, DelToro, 33, insisted that he resorted to brandishing a firearm because he wanted to scare his violent and aggressive father who had gone for a weapon first.
The Dec. 14, 2019, shooting death of Cindy Gale DelToro was a tragedy by every account. Initially, police said DelToro got into a fight with his father while the three were driving home from a night out to celebrate DelToro’s 28th birthday. The fight escalated when they parked outside their apartment on Banks Road in Margate.
DelToro pulled out a gun and, meaning to shoot his father, fired a bullet into his mother’s face.
As the case proceeded toward trial, DelToro introduced a new argument: He pulled the gun in self-defense. His father and namesake had a criminal record and a reputation as a violent hothead, DelToro said. Both men were armed the night of their final confrontation, he said. DelToro pulled his weapon only after his father went for his gun first, he said.
In the trial that started last week and went into closing arguments late Monday, jurors never heard the account provided by DelToro’s father, an account that also changed from the first time he talked to investigators.
In his account, DelToro’s father initially claimed he was not near his son when the gun went off. According to a transcript of that interview, he said he was inside the residence when the gun went off. But a few minutes later, he admitted he was there in the middle of a physical dispute with his son.
Defense lawyer Ronald Baum, in questioning the younger DelToro, was able to tell jurors that both the prosecution and the defense failed in their efforts to locate the father to get him to testify at the trial.
The case now will hinge on whether jurors accept the younger DelToro’s version of events.
“My dad’s 100 times stronger than me,” he said. He recalled his father having him pinned to the wall from behind and seeing his father reach for his own jacket pocket, where he knew his father kept a loaded gun. He credited his mother with trying to break up the fight.
“Why are you acting like this. It’s his birthday!” he quoted her as saying.
“I’m tired of you two; you’re always against me,” he recalled his father saying.
“I feared for my mom and myself,” DelToro told the jury on Monday. “I didn’t know what he was going to do, if he was going to attack me or attack my mom.”
The gun went off by accident, he said.
Prosecutor Courtney DePersio disputed major aspects of DelToro’s account, especially the self-defense claims. She portrayed the younger DelToro as “aggravated,” a word he used repeatedly when he was first questioned by police.
She said it was unlikely the firearm went off by accident and said it was more likely DelToro meant to shoot his father but could not see his mother standing between them because his prescription glasses had been knocked off during the fight.
DePersio was in the middle of her closing argument as of late Monday afternoon. The trial resumes on Tuesday.
Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457. Follow him on Threads.net/@rafael.olmeda.