Brenda Rabideau is facing charges of second-degree attempted murder, first-degree attempted assault, second-degree assault, first-degree criminal use of a firearm and first-degree reckless endangerment.
PLATTSBURGH — Rebecca Lagree remembers watching as her mother fell into a lasting depression several years ago.
"She became more and more depressed," the Mooers Forks woman recalled about the time after Brenda Rabideau was diagnosed with cancer in 2001.
"She was always on the couch, sleeping or taking (her anti-depressant and anxiety) pills."
After the deaths of several loved ones, Lagree said, Rabideau's sadness continued, and it grew as her failing marriage shifted into a bitter divorce from Ricky Rabideau.
Looking back, Lagree testified Friday during her mother's attempted-murder trial, her stepfather was "always yelling" and upset about money and never showed any compassion.
Days before her mother shot the 46-year-old contractor in the back, Lagree said, she spent hours trying to help her mom cope with the emotional aftermath of the divorce filing.
"She was just really sad," Lagree told the 14 jurors after the prosecution rested its case Friday afternoon.
The night before the shooting, Mrs. Rabideau, 50, spent the evening in her unheated and sparsely furnished trailer in Ellenburg Depot.
Her sister Hilda DeCoste said the mother of four was visibly upset and drinking.
"She was a little tipsy. She laid on the floor most of the time. She said she couldn't get up," DeCoste said before Family Court and Integrated Domestic Violence Court Judge Timothy Lawliss.
The next day, Mrs. Rabideau allegedly went to her former Mooers Forks home and shot her husband after a heated argument.
Susan Spoor talked briefly to her sister before she was taken to jail.
Speaking to her through a patrol-car window, Spoor said, Mrs. Rabideau "had no idea I was there."
"She looked, and it was just a blank look. She was just kind of rocking ... the only thing she said was that he deserved to die."
About two days after the April 2008 shooting, Lagree visited her mother in the hospital.
"She was distraught. Just going back and forth, rubbing her hands, just sad and out of it. She didn't even remember us going."
During the third day of trial testimony, Robin Hinson took the stand as the first defense witness and told jurors about Mrs. Rabideau's mental-health history.
The physician's assistant had been prescribing her anti-depressants and anxiety medications for about five years.
Hinson said the "divorce caused her a great deal of stress" and recalled listening to Mrs. Rabideau describe how her husband supposedly monitored his wife's phone and hot-water use and "wouldn't support her financially or emotionally."
PROSECUTION RESTS
Earlier Friday, as the last prosecution witness, Dr. Mohammad Khan described tending to Mr. Rabideau's wound after he was shot with a .22-caliber bolt-action rifle.
Prosecutors have argued that Mrs. Rabideau showed clear intent that day, but the defense says she was driven by extreme emotional distress.
Mrs. Rabideau told police she was trying to scare her husband and didn't mean to shoot him.
About a dozen prosecution witnesses testified before the defense unsuccessfully tried to get the case dismissed.
More defense witnesses are expected to take the stand Monday morning, when the trial resumes.
E-mail Andrea VanValkenburg at: avanvalkenburg@pressrepublican.com
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