Defendant offered conflicting statements in hours after neighbors were slain, deputies testify
In the hours after his neighbors were shot, Jonathan Sander told sheriff’s deputies he “reached his breaking point” after being called a child molester, but also said he had blacked out after consuming alcohol and marijuana, witnesses said Wednesday.
The third day of Sander’s death penalty trial focused on the frantic hours after deputies discovered three members of the Mazzella family dead of shotgun wounds next-door and tried to coax Sander out of his house, where he yelled back about being “already dead” and asked for some of his wife’s Xanax.
Sander, who was 52 at the time of the 2016 shooting, faces three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Sandy and Stephanie Mazzella and Sandy’s 76-year-old mother, Elaine. Sander has already lashed out at shooting survivor Salvatore Mazzella, Sandy’s father, while he was on the witness stand. That outburst drew a last-chance warning from Superior Court Judge Graham Shirley.
On Wednesday, Deputy T.A. Thompson described the ride with Sander from his home on Clearsprings Drive outside Wake Forest to WakeMed, where Sander was taken for treatment of chest pains after holing up in his house for nearly an hour.
Thompson said Sander had a strong odor of alcohol about him and began speaking without being questioned. He asked repeatedly what had happened, then, “He just kind of blurted out, ‘I was confronted by the neighbor, and I just reached my breaking point.”
Testimony throughout the trial has described Sander and the Mazzellas as best friends and partners in a landscaping business, close enough that they lived next-door and took vacations together. But finances soured and the business suffered, sparking numerous arguments that drew officers on calls to their houses, and prompted the Mazzellas to seek a restraining order.
Shortly before the shootings, an underage member of the Mazzella family accused Sander of inappropriately touching her, escalating the disagreements to the extent that Sander’s wife blocked the Mazzellas’ driveway with her car on the morning of the slayings, earning a citation from deputies for false imprisonment.
Stephanie Mazzellas’ brother, Joe Kern, testified Tuesday that he, Sander and his brother-in-law Sandy smoked marijuana after work nearly every day and that Sander regularly drank to excess. Three officers have testified he smelled of alcohol after the shootings, including ex-deputy Jessica Bostian, who sat in Sander’s room at Wake Med.
Bostian testified Wednesday that Sander, without being questioned, began describing the minor child’s accusations and said that, “He snapped, period. ‘Everyone knows if you go to jail for molesting a child your life is over.’ “
He told her that he had blacked out after drinking alcohol and smoking a joint before police arrived, and he repeatedly asked who had been hurt. When a crime-scene investigator arrived at WakeMed to collect Sander’s clothes, Bostian testified he said, “ ‘You will find gunshot residue on my hand because I did ... ’ he paused, ‘...have my gun.’ “
Hours later, Bostian said, Sander was taken downtown to the sheriff’s office, but on his way he told her, “You know, after doing something like this, I never would have expected being treated like a human. Thank you, guys.”
Testimony continues Wednesday afternoon.
This story was originally published March 27, 2019 at 2:26 PM.