Trial opens for Ontario woman charged with murdering her husband

SAN BERNARDINO -- A trial opened today in the case of an Ontario woman charged with murdering her husband nearly four years ago.

Mia Joleen Gonzales, 36, shot and killed Abel Gonzales on Oct. 27, 2007 during an argument over the couple's marriage.

Mia Gonzales discovered four months before the shooting that her husband, a 44-year-old state parole agent based in Fontana, had been cheating on her, Deputy District Attorney Mary Izadi told a jury in her opening statement.

The couple tried to preserve their marriage. They had two children together and a teenage stepchild. But the night of the shooting they argued over whether to divorce, Izadi said.

The argument turned from verbal to physical shortly before 12:30 a.m. in the couple's bedroom in the 1900 block of South Almond Street.

Mia Gonzales told police she slapped her husband, and markings on her neck and arms support her contention that Abel Gonzales also became physical with her.

Mia Gonzales retrieved a revolver from a dresser drawer, Izadi said, and at close range fired a bullet into the front of her husband's neck. The round came to rest inside Abel Gonzales' skull.

In interviews with police after the shooting, Mia Gonzales said she accidently fired the gun.

She repeatedly said, "I didn't mean to," in recorded police interviews played aloud in San Bernardino Superior Court.

"I didn't know it was going to go off," she said.

In her opening statement, Izadi accused Mia Gonzales of lying about the shooting being accidental. The prosecutor called Gonzales "a chameleon."

"This case is about a woman who thinks she's smarter than everyone else," Izadi said.

Gonzales' defense attorney, Mark Fredrick, will wait to deliver an opening statement until after the prosecution presents its evidence.

But he hinted at a possible defense when he objected to Izadi calling Abel Gonzales a victim.

"I object to the term 'victim,'" Fredrick told Judge Ronald M. Christianson, who overruled the objection. "He's not the victim in this case."

Since her husband's shooting Mia Gonzales has been jailed in lieu of $2 million bail at the Central Detention Center in San Bernardino.

She cried softly and wiped her face with a tissue during Izadi's opening statement and much of the testimony that followed.

Four witnesses -- all from the Ontario Police Department -- were called to testify today by the prosecution.

Officers who went to the Gonzales home in response to Mia Gonzales' 911 call said that when they arrived, Mia Gonzales and her teenage daughter both rushed outside. Both were distraught, the officers said.

In interviews with police that followed, Mia Gonzales' mood alternated between concern for her children and regret over the shooting.

"I don't want to ruin their lives," she told an officer outside her home. "I didn't mean to."

She later threw up in a trash can in an interview room at the Ontario Police Department, according to testimony.