Robert Wooten's tumultuous relationship with Meisha Williams ended two years ago when he shot her twice in the back as she stood in the bathroom of her luxury rental apartment in New Rochelle.
But at his murder trial this week he insisted the shooting was in self defense. He claimed he grabbed her gun from her purse because he thought she was about to reach for it and fired it moments later as she held a large knife in a threatening position yelling she was going to stab him in the "(expletive) head".
"What were you thinking?" his lawyer Angelo MacDonald asked him.
"I was about to get stabbed in my (expletive) head," Wooten said, adding that he was thinking of previous incidents when she was violent towards him. "I had faith she's gonna do what
she said she was about to do."
The shooting occurred Aug. 24, 2024, in Williams' 21st floor apartment at 55 Clinton Place. Wooten and Williams were there that morning with a friend of Williams' and the friend's boyfriend, who were staying there that week. At the time, Wooten was ignoring an order of protection barring Williams from contact with him following her arrest for stabbing him at a Virginia gas station three months earlier.
The other couple left for a walk when Williams and Wooten began arguing. Wooten said it started when he complained he was "uncomfortable" with the living arrangements because Williams had let the couple sleep in the bedroom.
Multiple times jurors have seen snippets of the arguing on video captured by a Blink camera Williams installed in the kitchen. It records on a motion sensor but has many gaps while footage is uploaded, leaving viewers with a disjointed account. The defense maintains key moments of the confrontation were missed as a result.
Wooten claims that Williams hit him and he reflexively hit her back, which he would never do. They then scuffled on the couch, and he claims he pulled the gun from her Gucci bag where he knew she kept it. After she screamed at him for "pulling a grip in her crib" she got the knife, he claimed.
He claimed he fired because she was about to stab him with the knife. Five shell casings were later found, though he claimed to remember only firing three shots.
He said the gun was recoiling and firing wildly so he didn't know for sure she was shot. He left the apartment, drove off in his Cadillac Escalade and went to Queens, where he grew up. Police tracked him using license plate readers and arrested him that evening.
Wooten insisted the gun belonged to Williams; that she had it since before they met in 2021. But that could never be confirmed, in part because it was never recovered. He claimed to have dumped it in a sewer sometime between leaving New Rochelle and his arrest.
Hoping to show jurors Wooten's intent to kill Williams and his consciousness of guilt, Assistant District Attorney Kevin Jones pressed him on cross examination about not rendering aid once she was shot, not calling 911 or telling anyone in the building to get her help.
He did stop on Memorial Highway moments after driving away from the building when he spotted the couple that was staying with them. He told them to get her help. They claimed that he told them "I (expletive) up".
Wooten had a driver's license and car registration with an Atlanta address. But despite acknowledging that his name was not on the lease and he had never registered as an occupant as required, he insisted the New Rochelle apartment was his home.
If that was not his home, his self-defense claim would require a duty to retreat once threatened with deadly physical force. Jones led him through several snippets of the video showing clear chances when Wooten could have left the apartment during the arguing.
Wooten said he met Williams in late 2021 and that they lived together in various places in Georgia, Virgina and Florida over the next few years.
Several times on the video Williams can be heard yelling at Wooten to leave and the prosecution contends he killed her because she was ending the relationship.
But Wooten insisted it was he who kept trying to break up with Williams, that he always stayed because he still loved her and she was persistent in urging him to stay with her.
Wooten, 30, is charged with second-degree murder and faces a minimum of 15 years to life in prison up to 25 years to life. Jones' cross examination will continue Friday when the trial resumes before Westchester Judge George Fufidio.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Man who fatally shot girlfriend in New Rochelle claims self-defense
