By Mark Coddington
mark.coddington@theindependent.com

After nearly five hours of deliberation, a jury found Randy Harms, 49, guilty of attempted first-degree murder and use of a firearm to commit a felony.

Harms was arrested last Feb. 8 at the home of his wife, Diane Glenn, southeast of Broken Bow, after she reported that he had shot her.

He fired a rifle through a window into her house, then broke into the house and hit her with the butt of the gun before police arrived.

Attorneys on both sides told the jury that the case hinged on Harms' motivation for firing the shot.

Harms testified Thursday that he had planned to kill himself in front of Glenn and had bought the rifle earlier that day for that purpose.

He said he had been drinking heavily and didn't remember firing the shot, but in videotaped questioning from the night of the incident, he said he was hoping to intimidate his wife (The two have since divorced).

"I was not trying to hurt her. I was trying to scare her," he said on the tape. "I didn't know it would lead to all this."

Harms' attorney, Steve Potter of Gothenburg, noted his client's history of depression and the fact that he called his sister and son to tell them he was going to kill himself just before the shot was fired.

But Deputy County Attorney Glenn Clark said Harms had been planning all day to kill his wife. He argued that Harms called his wife on her cell phone from outside the house twice because he knew she would have to come to his side of the house in order to get good reception.

Glenn was hit by glass from the window where the bullet hit and believed the bullet had hit her face as well. She called 911 immediately.

After Harms got into the house, Glenn testified Wednesday, he threatened a "murder-suicide" and forced her to call back the dispatcher and tell law enforcement not to come to her home.

"He told her 'murder-suicide.' He was intent on killing her," Clark told the jury.

The two sides argued over whether Harms' bullet grazed Glenn's nose or whether her facial injuries were caused solely by the glass and gun butt.

Dan Osmond, a Custer County sheriff's deputy, testified that a matching shell casing was found in a spot about 40 feet away from the house where officers also found cigarette butts and whiskey.

Osmond said he believed the bullet traveled through a window and ended up in a closet, scratching the glasses Glenn was wearing along the way.

Harms is set to be sentenced at 1 p.m. March 20.