Jean Smith didn't hear the gun go off. She didn't even feel the bullet that pierced her stomach.
When she looked down, the rural Manchester woman begged the shooter to call 911. He fired another blast that tore through her arm, shattering bones.
She pleaded for help.
The last bullet hit her spine. Smith screamed and fell to the floor.
She asked to call her mother.
"I didn't want his voice to be the last one I heard," Smith said, testifying from a wheelchair in a Dubuque courtroom Tuesday morning. The trial for the Delaware County case is being held in Dubuque after a change-of-venue request was granted.
Smith, 49, recalled the terrifying morning on March 13, when her ex-boyfriend, Robert Krogmann, arrived at her home with a gun. He's accused of shooting her three times and faces charges of attempted murder and willful injury.
Krogmann, 51, pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Mark Brown, argued that his client suffered from severe depression and bipolar disorder, exacerbated by the couple's recent breakup. His intent was "skewed" by his mental illness, Brown argued.
"For reasons we believe, the defense believes, cannot be explained, he shot three times in the direction of Jean Smith," Brown said. "Frankly, the case is much, much more than that."
When Krogmann knocked on her door, Smith invited him inside and walked into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee.
When she turned around, Krogmann pointed a gun at her.
"He said that if he couldn't have me, no one could have me. And we were both going to die there together," Smith testified.
As she lay bleeding on the floor, she remembered that she left her cell phone in the bedroom. Krogmann refused to get it.
"He said he wasn't going to jail for attempted murder," she testified. "He said he didn't think it would take that long (for me) to die."
Krogmann eventually called his son, Jeff Krogmann, who contacted authorities as he drove to the house. As Smith clutched a rosary, Robert Krogmann allowed her to call her mother in Texas. In turn, her mother called Smith's brother, Michael Schnieders.
Jeff Krogmann said that his father called him in a "suicidal state of mind." When he arrived at the house, Jeff Krogmann put his hand on the gun and took it away.
"He was still very dazed and emotionally distraught, kind of out-of-it," he said of his father.
Schnieders testified that he raced over to the home, chased Robert Krogmann out with a broom and sat with his sister until Delaware County Sheriff John LeClere arrived.
Jeff Krogmann ran after his father, not knowing what he might do. Only days before, he went to his father's house to remove guns from the home.
"I decided to round up firearms just to get them out, so he wouldn't wind up hurting himself," he said.
The guns were removed once before, when his father was going through a divorce. His father had a history of depression and had been institutionalized at least once, Jeff Krogmann said.
Robert Krogmann claims diminished capacity as a defense, which is used to argue that the defendant was in a mental state unable to produce the intent to commit a crime. When used successfully, the defendant is usually convicted of a lesser charge.
The prosecution and defense are expected to call psychiatrists to the stand to offer opinions on Krogmann's mental state.
The trial resumes today.
