Creswell killing details emerge.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

Correction (published March 4, 2010): Homicide victim Steven M. Thurston of Creswell served in the U.S. Army. A City/Region story Wednesday incorrectly stated that he served in the Vietnam War, and misspelled his first name as Stephen.

A troubled young Creswell veteran called 911 the morning of July 18 to report he'd just shot his neighbor, then went outside to smoke marijuana as 59-year-old Stephen M. Thurston was dying, according to a search warrant affidavit filed by a Lane County Sheriff's Office detective.

Jarrod William Pardun, 28, faces a murder charge in the shooting of Thurston, a fellow veteran who spent his career counseling troubled former soldiers at the same clinic where Pardun received medical and psychiatric care.

Pardun had applied earlier for full disability because of his reported post-traumatic stress disorder.

Pardun told deputies, his sister and his live-in girlfriend that Thurston threatened him while confronting Pardun about speeding past Thurston's Meadow Lane house, Detective Randall Fenley wrote in a sworn statement the day of the shooting. His affidavit was for a warrant to search Pardun's home, his 1988 Cadillac, medical and psychiatric records, and samples of his blood and urine. Lane County Circuit Judge Karsten Rasmussen granted the warrant July 20.

Fenley's six-page affidavit summarized interviews by five deputies the day of the shooting. It was made public late last week after the search warrant was returned. According to the sworn statement:

Pardun's girlfriend told investigators they had argued and he angrily sped away from his sister's house, where they lived, before the confrontation with Thurston. Pardun soon returned to get his shotgun, telling her "I got attacked pretty much" and "I'm going to kill him." She said she tried to stop him from leaving with the weapon, but failed.

Pardun's sister gave a similar account, adding that her brother reported that Thurston had taken a couple of swings at him through the car window and warned Pardun he was going to get a gun. Her brother said he was getting his own gun first to make it "a level playing field," the sister said. She also reported trying to take the shotgun from Pardun, without success.

Meanwhile, a few blocks away, Thurston's wife was pleading with her husband to come inside their home after Pardun had twice driven past shouting curses and insults after the initial confrontation between the two men, the affidavit said. But Thurston refused, saying he wanted to stay in their front yard and finish assembling a toy baby-changing station their daughter had just received for her third birthday.

Thurston's wife said she first became aware of the dispute when she heard screeching tires and went to the front of their house to see her husband leaning into the window of an older model Cadillac, apparently speaking to the driver. Soon after, Stephen Thurston returned from the street to say he'd told "the kid" to cease driving too fast. Her statement made no mention of her husband threatening to harm Pardun or to get a weapon.

When the Cadillac returned for a third time, Thurston's wife told investigators she saw the driver point a long gun at her husband, her daughter and herself. She reported hearing a single shot and her daughter saying, "Daddy down," before grabbing the child and rushing her into the house. After calling for her husband's adult son inside the home to help and situating the child inside, Thurston returned to the front yard to see her wounded husband lying on the ground, complaining that he couldn't breathe, and telling his son that he loved him.

Sheriff's office Sgt. Rene Stone called Pardun's cell phone after he called 911 to report the shooting. He told her a man had yelled at him for driving too fast, advanced on him and said, "I'll kill you."

Pardun told investigators he had been diagnosed with "extreme PTSD" after leaving the Army about five years ago. He had an Oregon medical marijuana card, and told detectives he smoked the drug to combat anxiety, as well as taking prescription medications for that condition and depression. His girlfriend said he had smoked pot before and after the fatal shooting. Pardun continued wearing sunglasses even inside a sheriff's office interview room, and when he removed them, a deputy noticed that his pupils appeared to be "significantly dilated."

Evidence seized under the search warrant included Pardun's medical marijuana card, eight mature marijuana plants and a variety of prescription drugs and containers labeled with Pardun's name. Among them were the antidepressant amitriptyline; the anti-anxiety drug hydroxyzine; the anti-insomnia drug zolpidem; the narcotic pain medication oxycodone; and the anti-inflammatory drugs naproxen and etodolac.

Also seized were books and pamphlets on PTSD and the Iraq war. Pardun was never in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, his sister said, but while recovering in the United States from an injury, he reportedly watched by remote video as a mortar strike brought down a helicopter carrying members of his brigade.