A Gilbert man on Monday gave the first testimony linking Dale Hausner to the Serial Shooters killing spree, making him perhaps the most important witness yet in the marathon trial.
John Kane, 41, became friends with Hausner in late 2005 while teaching him how to make cash and mix drinks at a Tempe bartending school.
But their budding friendship took a bizarre turn in December of that year, when Hausner offered to help Kane deal with a young woman at the school who had accused him of sexual harassment.
“I asked him what he was going to do about it,” Kane testified at Hausner’s eight-count murder trial in Maricopa County Superior Court. “He said, ‘Don’t worry about it. You’ll know it when it happens.’ ”
A few nights later, on Dec. 29, a car believed to belong to the young woman was shot in the parking lot of the ABC Bartending School near Mill Avenue and Baseline Road.
No one was hurt in the shooting, but the bizarre event set the school on edge.
The next morning, Kane said, he had an abrupt conversation with Hausner in the offices of the academy.
“I sat down at my desk and said, ‘What the (expletive) are you doing?’” Kane testified.
“He just smiled and said, ‘Taking care of business.’
“I asked, ‘Did you do that?’
“He said, ‘Yeah.’”
The shooting at the academy is just one of dozens of crimes prosecutors say Hausner committed between May 2005 and August 2006 across the Valley.
Hausner, 35, of Mesa, is accused of being the main half of a duo that became known as the Serial Shooters during that period.
Photo by Ralph Freso, Tribune. Serial shooter suspect Dale Hausner attended the ABC Bartending School in Tempe where, in December 2005, prosecutors say he tried to shoot a woman who also attended the school.
