By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

“The defense calls Lovett Chambers.”

After those words from attorney Ben Goldsmith, the highest-stakes witness of the 3-month-old murder trial – the defendant himself – crossed the courtroom Monday afternoon to testify.

The day’s other major witness was his wife Sara Chambers, who was on the stand all morning and at the start of the afternoon. But she wasn’t there when he fired the fatal shots at Travis Hood on January 21, 2012, so all she could provide was context and aftermath.

Goldsmith asked outright and immediately: “Why did you shoot him?”

“To save my life,” Chambers replied.

After that zero-to-sixty opening, Goldsmith backtracked to lead Chambers through the background of his Seattle life. He met his wife at Pike Place Market (where, she testified earlier, she has sold jewelry for more than 30 years). Shortly thereafter, he started his own construction company, and was licensed in Washington and Oregon. But while en route to a bid opening for an Oregon project, he said, he was hit by a truck, breaking his back, leading to two surgeries. He decided to switch businesses and went back to school for computer-related degrees from local colleges.

They moved to West Seattle from Leschi in 1993, after buying their house (built in the 1940s, Sara Chambers had testified earlier). Chambers explained that one of its attractions was that it “sits on a one-block street, not much traffic.”

Asked about the day of the shooting, his home office is where his story began. He had been on a conference call that went so well, he was “elated” afterward: “I was happy because I got this contract … that was going to go on for possibly a couple years so we’d be ensured income.” He called his wife to tell her.

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