ALLISON, Iowa — A jury found an Iowa man guilty Tuesday of first-degree murder in the shooting of a nationally known high school football coach.
It took the jury 24 hours over four days to reach its decision, finding Mark Becker, 24, guilty in the June 24, 2009, killing of Aplington-Parkersburg coach Ed Thomas.
Becker gunned down Thomas, 58, in the school’s makeshift weight room in front of students, shooting him at least six times before walking away. Becker told police that Thomas was Satan and that the coach had been tormenting him.
The shooting was especially shocking to Parkersburg residents because Thomas was known both for producing winning teams and for leading the community.
He amassed a 292-84 record and two state titles in 37 seasons as a head coach — 34 of them at Aplington-Parkersburg — and coached four players who have played in the NFL. He also was a leader in rebuilding Parkersburg after nearly one-third of the 1,800-person town was wiped out in May 2008 by a tornado that killed six people.
The trial largely centred around Becker’s mental status on the day of the shooting. Prosecutors and defence attorneys agreed that Becker shot Thomas and that Becker suffered from paranoid schizophrenia that caused him to have intense hallucinations and delusions.
But prosecutors Scott Brown and Andy Prosser repeatedly argued that that mental illness was not equal to insanity.
The defence, represented by public defenders Susan Flander and Derek Jones, countered with witnesses who testified that Becker didn’t understand what he was doing and couldn’t distinguish right from wrong.
It became clear during seven days of testimony that the killing could have been prevented, or at least postponed, if Becker hadn’t been released from the psychiatric ward of a Waterloo hospital.