HOLLIDAYSBURG — An Altoona man told police almost two years ago that it wasn’t his intention to kill anyone outside the Kettle Inn bar, where he’s accused of shooting a bullet through a vehicle windshield and trying to fire at the rear of the vehicle as the driver fled with four passengers.

Altoona police Detective Jon Burns told a jury Wednesday that Mark A. Phillips Jr., 39, provided a “short version of events” after the Dec. 11, 2022, shooting and asked what could be seen on surveillance video.

What’s on surveillance video — as played in court for the jury — is Phillips approaching the vehicle with a handgun and sending a bullet through the windshield, before he reaches through a window to attack a back-seat passenger, then attempts to fire at the vehicle as the driver flees.

“Does he ever admit to firing the gun?” First Assistant District Attorney Nichole Smith asked Burns, who replied: “No.”

Instead, the detective recalled Phillips saying he may have hit the windshield with his hand and offering a possible explanation for why his finger may have been on the gun’s trigger.

“Maybe it was on the trigger, because I have big hands and it’s a small gun,” Burns recalled Phillips saying.

Phillips’ trial is scheduled to wrap up today in Blair County court, where the jury will be expected to render verdicts on charges of attempted homicide, aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment and related offenses.

In court Wednesday, Smith and District Attorney Pete Weeks wrapped up their presentation of witnesses, which included state police ballistic expert Matthew Perger, who said his testing of the semi-automatic handgun left him convinced that the gun wouldn’t fire without the trigger being pulled.

Defense attorney Kristen Anastasi attempted to challenge Perger’s conclusion by pointing out that when he did his test, he wasn’t smashing the gun against a windshield.

Perger said that wouldn’t have made a difference.

Anastasi’s question also prompted Weeks to ask Perger if he hit the gun with a mallet during the testing. Perger said he used a rubber mallet.

“And did it fire?” Weeks asked.

“No,” Perger answered.

Wednesday’s witnesses also included a 21-year-old Duncansville woman who was driving the vehicle that Phillips is alleged to have fired at.

The woman said she went to the Kettle Inn parking lot to pick up friends who had been drinking. She said she saw Mykel T. Cowher punch a man — later identified as Phillips — before her three friends and Cowher got into her car for a ride home.

As the woman left the parking lot and started driving down an alley, she said a man “with a gun in his hand” approached her vehicle, prompting her to stop. She told the jury she kind of blacked out, but recalled yelling and seeing the man with the gun reaching through the window to strike the face of her friend in the back seat, leaving him bloody.

“I started driving away,” she told the jury. “He was bleeding from his cheek.”

She said she later realized that she, too, was injured during the chain of events.

“I had glass in my face, in my scalp and hair … in my neck … embedded in my skin,” she said.

Burns told the jury that Phillips claimed the driver of the vehicle had been trying to strike him. Surveillance video, however, showed Phillips heading in the direction of the woman’s vehicle with an extended arm.

Surveillance video also captured Phillips pointing the gun at the rear of the vehicle as the driver fled, then racking the gun’s slide.

“He indicated that he was in harm’s way, but the video indicates that he wasn’t,” Burns said.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.