ELYRIA — Daniel Petric told a defense psychologist that he had thought about shooting his parents in the weeks before he allegedly killed his mother and wounded his father, Assistant Lorain County Prosecutor Tony Cillo said Tuesday.

Daniel spoke with adolescent forensic psychologist Steven Neuhas as part of a mental health evaluation prepared after the 17-year-old pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the Oct. 20, 2007, shooting of his parents.

Experts who examined Daniel later determined that the boy was sane.

Daniel’s defense attorney, James Kersey, has argued throughout the trial that his client didn’t plan the attack on his parents but hasn’t denied that his client, who is being tried as an adult, was the gunman.

Cillo brought up Neuhas’ report as he attacked the testimony of Daniel’s former youth pastor, Christina Howes, who described Daniel as a normal teenager in the year leading up to the shooting. Howes also said she believed that Daniel was genuinely remorseful about shooting his parents.

“He sobbed,” she said of visiting Daniel after his arrest. “He was very shameful.”

Howes wasn’t the only one to describe Daniel as remorseful.

During the first day of testimony on Monday, his father, the Rev. Mark Petric, said his son had apologized to him and he has forgiven Daniel, who was 16 at the time of the shootings.

The elder Petric told Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge, who is hearing the case instead of a jury, that Daniel told him and his wife, Sue Petric, to close their eyes because he had a surprise for them.

According to prosecutors, Daniel Petric then shot both of his parents, killing Sue Petric and wounding Mark Petric.

When he came to a few moments later, Mark Petric said, he saw that his wife wasn’t moving, and Daniel was trying to place a 9 mm handgun in his hand.

Prosecutors contend that Daniel stole his father’s key to the lockbox where the gun was kept and retrieved the semiautomatic pistol along with a copy of the sci-fi video game “Halo 3” that his parents had confiscated from him before the shooting.

Daniel fled the Petrics’ Brighton Township home after his sister, Heidi Archer, and her husband arrived shortly after the shootings. He told Wellington police when they arrested him that his father had shot his mother. Prosecutors say Daniel later confessed to the shootings and said he tried to make it appear to be a murder-suicide.

A killer wasn’t the way Daniel’s friends and family described him when they took the stand on Tuesday.

“Danny was very mild and meek,” said his paternal grandfather, Michael Broeckel, who agreed with Howes that Daniel was a normal teenager, albeit one addicted to video games.

Holly Petric, Daniel’s other sister, said her brother became obsessed with video games because of a back injury which led to a staph infection that limited his physical activity. Daniel’s other family members have also testified that the infection was so severe that any extreme physical activity could have caused his spine to snap, leaving him paralyzed.

“He’d just play (video games) nonstop whenever he could,” Holly Petric said.

Jon Johnson, the friend with whom Daniel stayed with for three days after briefly moving out of his parent’s home about a week before the shootings, said he and Daniel would play video games, particularly “Halo 3,” up to 18 hours a day.

Jon said that while he liked video games, Daniel was addicted, even going so far as to push his friends to play the games when they wanted to do something else.

“You don’t believe ‘Halo 3’ is the reason Danny killed his mother?” Cillo asked Jon.

“No,” the teenager replied.

Jon also said Daniel decided to return to his parent’s home even though he had problems with them.

“Tensions were high at his house between he and his father,” Jon said.

Daniel could get life in prison if convicted of aggravated murder and other charges.

The trial resumes this morning with closing arguments.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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