Murder case against Iraq War veteran goes to jury

Jurors tasked with sorting out whether longstanding mental health issues or jealous anger caused a Des Moines man to kill his neighbor began deliberating around noon Wednesday.

In closing arguments, prosecutors hoped to convince jurors in a Polk County courtroom that Patrick Kirwan, 31, shot and killed Mark Hruska because of suspicions that his girlfriend and the victim were having an affair.

But defense attorney Darren Page argued the March 1, 2015, killing was driven by Kirwan's struggles with schizoaffective and post-traumatic stress disorders — conditions worsened by the months he spent in the Iraq War after enlisting in the U.S. Army when he was 19.

"You got this recruiter telling you about how great it is and you're going to be able to pay for college," Page said of Kirwan's time in the military. "They don't tell you that you're going to be cleaning the blood, brains and the guts of one of your close friends from a vehicle one day... They don't tell you that you can be killed while laying in your bed trying to get a few hours of sleep."

Kirwan spent 15 months serving at a forward operating base south of Baghdad, experiencing gunfights, rocket-propelled grenade attacks and bomb explosions. After returning to the U.S. in 2006, Kirwan was not able to fully get the help he needed at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs facilities, Page said.

Jurors left after 4 p.m. Wednesday without reaching a verdict in the case.

Police found Hruska, 35, dead in the doorway of his East Diehl Avenue home shortly after Kirwan had called his girlfriend and her mother, telling them, "Mark's not with us anymore." Assistant Polk County Attorney Michael Salvner told jurors on the opening day of testimony that Kirwan used a .40 caliber handgun during the shooting.

In his closing, prosecutor Michael Hunter repeated his argument that Kirwan made a deliberate decision to shoot his neighbor out of anger over the suspected affair, which prosecutors said did not exist. The veteran's girlfriend, who he shared a child with, had moved out of their house earlier in the day out of frustration. The only reason Kirwan would have taken a handgun to Hruska's house was if he planned the killing, Hunter said.

"All of the things he's done, up to the point where he shoots him, were deliberate," he said. "His decision to arm, to load, to point a weapon at another human being... He's sat there and stewed about it before he decided to get his loaded gun as he's going over there."

Kirwan's attorneys have also claimed that the shooting happened in self-defense, a claim the prosecutor attacked in his closing. Hruska was found unarmed, and evidence showed the veteran shot him in the back, Hunter said.

But Page pointed to evidence that showed Kirwan suffered from PTSD and schizoaffective disorder, a condition that can cause both hallucinations and delusions. The mother of Kirwan's girlfriend testified during the trial that he appeared "in his own world" on the day of the shooting, Page said.

The defense attorney said that Kirwan went to his neighbor's house the afternoon of the shooting to purchase marijuana, and an interaction between the two triggered a "fight or flight" reaction brought on by PTSD. Kirwan has suffered daily since returning from Iraq in 2006 from symptoms of the disorder, Page said.

"He was destroyed, completely destroyed when he came back," Page said. "Unable to sleep, unable to eat, unable to ratchet it down."

Kirwan's defense attorneys used insanity as one defense in the case, meaning jurors must find that he could not appreciate the nature or consequences of his actions and that he could not tell the difference between right and wrong.