NEW ORLEANS -- The man who fatally shot retired New Orleans Saints star Will Smith insisted Saturday that he did so only after a drunken, irate Smith retrieved a gun from his damaged SUV following an April 9 car crash.
"I knew for a fact that I was going to get shot," Cardell Hayes, 29, told the jury in his second-degree murder trial, adding that he heard a pop that he believed to be a gunshot before he fired. Hayes also insisted he didn't shoot Smith's wife Racquel that night, despite prosecutors' saying ballistics evidence shows otherwise.