Former pastor accused of double murder testifies at trial
A neighborhood feud that lasted more than a decade ended in 2020 with a Las Vegas pastor shooting a 71-year-old woman and her boyfriend in the head.
On June 25, 2020, Andrew Cote pulled his shotgun off the kitchen cabinet, walked into his backyard and shot over the wall marking his property line, killing his neighbor, Mildred Olivo, and her boyfriend, 54-year-old Timothy Hanson, prosecutors said. Cote, a former pastor at Mountain View Baptist Church, testified on Wednesday for more than four hours during his murder trial, telling jurors that he was afraid of his neighbor.
“Certainly you acknowledge that there were things you could have done other than shooting them both with a 12-gauge shotgun, right?” Chief Deputy District Attorney Pamela Weckerly asked Cote.
“You mean like doing jumping jacks?” Cote replied sarcastically.
Cote, 38, faces two murder charges. Jurors are expected to begin deliberating a verdict on Thursday morning.
The issues between Cote’s family and Olivo began in 2009, when he moved into his home near Smoke Ranch Road and Decatur Boulevard, he said. Over the years, both neighbors called the police on each other and applied for restraining orders. Cote told jurors that shortly after he and his wife moved in, Olivo had threatened to shoot his wife.
Cote said that the night of the shooting, he heard Hanson yelling outside and grabbed his shotgun because he was frightened. When he saw his then-9-year-old daughter in the backyard, he went outside and shot Hanson, then Olivo, then Hanson again.
While testifying Wednesday, Cote admitted that he didn’t intend to speak with Hanson when he walked outside his home.
“I think if your daughter is swimming in the ocean, and you see that there’s a shark swimming around, you’re going to jump in the water not intending on having conversations with the shark,” Cote told the prosecutor.
Defense attorney Michael Sanft compared Olivo’s treatment of Cote to “torture” that slowly built up over more than a decade. He said that a reasonable person in Cote’s position could have acted in self-defense.
“What do you think a reasonable person would do coming out of his house to defend his little girl?” Sanft said during closing arguments.
Calls to animal control
Cote told the jury that his issues with Olivo began in 2009 when his 1-year-old Chihuahua, Princess, went missing. Cote said Olivo had asked to keep the dog in the past, and he assumed she had stolen it.
Animal control had received multiple reports about Cote’s pets over the years, and Cote said he believed Olivo was making the calls.
After Olivo rejected Cote’s attempts to get Olivo to attend his church, Cote told the jury, he found torn-up pictures of Jesus on his front porch. At one point, Olivo hanged a white banner reading “Satan” from her back porch, which faced Cote’s yard, Sanft said.
Cote said he previously reported Olivo to the police after she took a screen used for sifting dirt from his yard, and she was convicted of petty larceny. A fence had been erected between the two homes, and Cote said Olivo would throw pieces of trash into his backyard.
Cote said he began videotaping interactions with Olivo and installed a surveillance system to watch Olivo when she was outside her home.
“She always had eyes on my property and who’s coming and going,” Cote said.
On the afternoon of June 25, Cote said he was videotaping Olivo as she was watering plants in her yard, and Olivo sprayed him and his daughter with a hose.
Cote told jurors he called police because he believed Olivo was violating a restraining order. Cote said the police told him “it’s only water.”
That night, Cote said he heard yelling coming from outside the home. He said he recognized Hanson’s voice from previous disputes.
Cote said Hanson was yelling at his daughter: “Little girl, go get your daddy, get your daddy out here.”
Hanson was standing on the other side of the wall separating the two yards. Cote said he walked outside with his semi-automatic shotgun, and Hanson called to him, “Oh, you got a gun, huh?”
Sanft argued that Cote thought the gun would get Hanson to leave him alone, but he was threatened when Hanson didn’t seem to care about the firearm.
“When Mr. Cote came out with that gun, he prayed not to use it,” Sanft said.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo said during closing arguments that although Olivo and Cote acted like “giant babies” while they were neighbors, Cote was not justified in the killings.
“Yes, the system failed in the sense of its ability to intervene between the problems of Mildred Olivo and Andrew Cote,” DiGiacomo said. “The system will fail again if you let him get anything less than first-degree murder for both of them.”
Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.