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Dale Holloway shot both Bishop Stanley Choate and a bride, Claire McMullen. (Screenshot: WMUR)
Jurors on Thursday sided with prosecutors who said Dale Holloway, 41, was sane when he walked up to a wedding and shot the bride and a bishop. Guests stopped him.
“What he wanted to do is kill,” prosecutor John Harding III said in a New Hampshire courtroom on Thursday, according to The Associated Press. “That’s why he had a gun, a loaded gun.”
Holloway was convicted Tuesday of attempted murder for shooting Bishop Stanley Choate. Though he was acquitted of trying to kill the bride, Claire McMullen, he was found guilty of other charges, including first-degree assault.
The October 2019 shooting at New England Pentecostal Ministries in Pelham followed almost two weeks after Brandon Castiglione shot and killed Holloway’s stepfather, Luis Garcia, 60. In August, a judge sentenced Castiglione to 42 years to life in prison for second-degree murder.
Holloway, who represented himself, argued he was insane during the church shooting, but even he highlighted bitter feelings over his stepfather’s death. Loved ones were going to hold a celebration of Garcia’s life later on the same day when McMullen was going to marry Castiglione’s father.
“They planned to stomp on his grave,” he said, construing the bishop’s and the groom’s actions.
He claimed to hear voices and struggle with demons, including Satan. In trying to prove this, he played his rap music for jurors.
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“Maybe I did some things that I didn’t want to do that I feel as if Satan made me do,” he said regarding one of the songs, according to The Associated Press.
His mother, Patricia Garcia, testified he was a “hard-headed, smart child” who experienced violence in the neighborhood, according to WMUR.
Holloway even called Luis Garcia to the stand via a video he made of Garcia preaching. Music was set to Tupac Shakur.
“Tupac’s Shakur’s music is on there as a collaboration with Minister Garcia, so that’s double the depression that I was mourning for,” Holloway reportedly said.
He brought up a forensic psychologist who diagnosed him, in a preliminary draft and not a full evaluation, with PTSD and paranoid personality disorder.
The expert, Eric Mart, addressed Holloway by saying, “[you have a] problem with your thought processes when you’re under stress,” according to WMUR.
He and state expert Shannon Bader reportedly both said, however, that Holloway exaggerated his mental health symptoms. Bader diagnosed him with antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and other issues but said his mental illness did not spark his actions.
