MAYNARDVILLE (WATE) – Former Knox County Schools security officer Kevin Waggoner is on trial in Union County, accused of shooting and killed his neighbor, Michael Woodby in 2013. The Waggoners and Woodbys, who live across the street from each other, had been feuding for years, obsessively recording and videotaping each other in their yards.
There are 180 hours of audio recordings in the case, including what prosecutors said is Waggoner talking about the potential death of Woodby.
“I don’t understand. I don’t grasp how it is that you can be so oblivious to your true surroundings and how close you are to dying. And it’s all within your control,” Waggoner said in the recording from a few months before the shooting. “This is 100 percent within his control now, not to die from me; 100 percent within his ability not to die. And he’s choosing to come straight at me.”
Waggoner seemed to record his every move: walks outside his house where he would document his encounters with Woodby, and even conversations with his own family members.
“We’ve asked and asked him to leave us alone,” Waggoner said in another recording. “For two and a half years, you’ve been simply incapable of doing so, and there’s lots and lots of video to prove it, and that’s not going to change. We have to protect ourselves.”
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Andy Corbitt was on the witness stand most of Thursday. The defense spent an hour and a half pressing him on how he handled the investigation, suggesting parts of it weren’t done the way they should have been.
Defense attorney Scott Lanzon brought up how and when the area had been concerned, the unknown number of people who had walked or driven through the scene, and whether it had been properly investigated with a grid search for blood.
Other concerns included the documentation that Waggoner had not been read his Miranda rights until after he had given statements, twice.
“There’s an explanation for that,” Corbitt said, adding that the documented times were incorrect. But Lanzon said there wasn’t any proof of that; all they had to look at was the documentation and Corbitt’s account.
“It looks like his rights have been violated, doesn’t it?” Lanzon asked.
“Potentially,” Corbitt said.
The trial will likely run longer than it was supposed to. If there are to be two extra days, they will be Monday and Tuesday; if only one extra day is needed, it will be Saturday.
