A prosecutor told a jury Tuesday during closing arguments in a Vancouver man’s murder trial that the defendant’s actions speak louder than his words.
Deputy Prosecutor Kelly Ryan said Austin J. Navarro’s actions show he intended to fatally shoot his former girlfriend, Inessa G. Kryshtal, in August 2021 in a central Vancouver gas station parking lot. That’s despite Navarro testifying Monday the gun slipped from his grip and accidentally fired as he tried to catch it.
Navarro, 32, is charged in Clark County Superior Court with second-degree domestic violence murder and unlawful possession of a firearm.
“It’s our actions that define us,” Ryan said. “It was the actions of the defendant that make him guilty of murder in the second degree.”
Navarro’s defense attorney, Josephine Townsend, told the jury to go ahead and find him guilty of the unlawful firearm possession charge.
“He had the gun. He’s a convicted felon. That’s it,” Townsend said. “Check the box on count two.”
Navarro carried the gun because of his former gang affiliation, she said, and as “most of you would know, you don’t get to leave a gang.”
But Townsend told the jury regardless of what they think of Navarro, they shouldn’t find him guilty of murder. She asked jurors to consider whether the killing was excusable as an accident or to, at the very least, find he was reckless — which she said would make him guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
“Something really bad happened to a lovely woman,” Townsend said. “And he’s responsible for that. To what degree, you have to determine.”
Ryan showed the jury a photo of Kryshtal’s car’s passenger window rolled down about an inch. She was shot through that gap, Ryan said, which is shown by the fact the window was still intact.
The prosecutor held the gun, pointed upward, and talked the jury through the shooting the way Navarro told it. He called Navarro’s version of the incident — with him fumbling with the falling gun and accidentally pulling the trigger to fire it through the cracked window — “magical.”
Ryan also displayed messages between Navarro and Kryshtal before the shooting. He read excerpts in which Navarro messaged Kryshtal that he hated her and planned to wait at her house so he could get his belongings back. When Kryshtal told Navarro to instead meet at the gas station, Ryan read messages from Navarro telling her to be alone.
The prosecutor noted Navarro never messaged Kryshtal about not wanting to meet at the gas station because it was in gang territory, despite Navarro testifying that was the reason he was upset that day.
“Inessa Kryshtal thought she was getting free from the defendant on Aug. 23, 2021,” Ryan said. “She thought she was just returning his belongings and moving on with her life … but Inessa Kryshtal never got to move on.”
Townsend questioned why Navarro would agree to meet Kryshtal in a public place if he planned to kill her that night.
The jury began deliberating shortly before 4 p.m. Tuesday and was set to resume Wednesday morning.
