SMETHPORT — Stephen Stidd, accused of killing his son-in-law more than two years ago in Bradford, took the stand in his own defense Monday in McKean County Court, describing a smile on the face of Melvin Bizzarro as he collapsed backward into the snow after being shot.

“He was smiling at me, and he said, ‘Oh, f— you,’ and he looked at me and smiled and went right back with his arms out like God on the cross.”

The shooting occurred Jan. 16, 2015, behind Togi’s restaurant in Bradford. Stidd, 65, is on trial for Bizzarro’s murder.

Defense attorney Greg Henry asked Stidd to describe what happened that day. Stidd said he was parked in his truck behind Togi’s, waiting to meet with a minister about the potential purchase of a church behind the restaurant. He saw Bizzarro’s car coming.

“I said to my wife, ‘Uh oh,’” Stidd said. His daughter, Michelle Bizzarro, was married to Mel Bizzarro, but the two were separated. She testified earlier Monday to being abused by her husband.

She was in the restaurant when Stidd saw Mel Bizzarro coming.

“I got out of the truck because I wanted to get to the restaurant before him,” Stidd said. “I said ‘Hey, Mel, where you going?’ He said, ‘Inside.’”

After Stidd yelled, Bizzarro came toward him. “He pressed his head against me, it was the weirdest feeling in the world, pressing his face against mine. He said, ‘I’m going to f—ing kill you.’”

He said Bizzarro headbutted him, and he reached into his coat pocket where he kept his two-shot derringer pistol. He half-cocked it in his pocket, then pulled it out and cocked it behind his back, saying he was afraid Bizzarro would grab it from him.

“I told him I had a gun before I even got it out,” Stidd said. “He smirked a little bit. I don’t think he thought the gun was real.

“I said, ‘Stop, please, stop,’ and he kept coming. When he was coming, I had to shoot,” Stidd said. “All this smoke came out, and I thought, ‘Oh, God, it didn’t work.’”

He said he looked up, and Bizzarro was smiling at him. Then, holding his arms straight out, Stidd recounted how Bizzarro fell back to the ground.

“I thought he might be faking it,” Stidd said. “I thought he might grab me.”

He said he tried to see if Bizzarro had a pulse, but “his neck was so big, I couldn’t feel anything.”

Stidd hung his head, closing his eyes. “I thought, ‘Oh, God, I don’t want this to happen. I loved him.”

Looking into the audience at Bizzarro’s mother, Julie Day, Stidd said, “You know I loved him.”

Prosecutor Bobbi Jo Wagner objected.

Stidd continued, “I did everything I could for Mel, 25 years, I did everything I could. He had everything you could want in life. He had a beautiful wife, wonderful kids. I wanted him to straighten up. But he got into the damned drugs…”

Henry interrupted, asking Stidd if he’d done anything to provoke Bizzarro that day.

“All I did was tell him to stop,” Stidd said.

Henry asked if he was afraid of Bizzarro, in light of a prior assault in 2005 when Stidd was hospitalized with a brain bleed.

“When he turned to come at me, he was … like … glowing,” Stidd said, “when he got in my face, he was like a rhinoceros, when he headbutted me he just about knocked me out.”

He said Bizzarro had told him before that he would pick him up and ram his head into a brick wall. “I knew if he got me, he’d kill me. When he got mad, when he said, ‘You wanna go,’ he was coming. That meant he was coming at me and he was going to beat the s— out of me until I was dead.”

He said Bizzarro was part of his family, asking the jury, “Did anyone ever have a bad kid? You love them and you live with it and you try to work it out.”

Under cross-examination by Wagner, Stidd wasn’t as calm.

Wagner mentioned Stidd and Bizzarro had gotten along between the 2005 altercation and 2014, when the Bizzarros separated. “You weren’t afraid of him then?”

Stidd replied, “Like a pet tiger; are you afraid of the pet tiger?”

She asked about the 2005 altercation between the two, asking if Stidd had hit Bizzarro the night before with a mop.

“A mop?” Stidd shouted, incredulous. “You’re crazy! I never struck Mel with a mop! You know what that would be? Suicide!”

Wagner asked Stidd if he called police when he saw Bizzarro get out of his car on Jan. 16, 2015. No, he said, “if you call the police on Mel he’d go ballistic.”

He paused for a moment, then said to Wagner, “Do you have a family?” Taken aback, she replied, “I don’t know how that’s relevant.”

“I tried to keep my family together,” Stidd said.

“If you stayed in the car and called the police…” Wagner began to ask. Stidd angrily interrupted, yelling, “My daughter would have had the s— beat out of her!”

“You didn’t think the police would come?” Wagner asked loudly.

Senior Judge John Cleland interrupted, cautioning both to keep their voices down.

Wagner asked Stidd if it was necessary to shoot him in the chest to stop him.

“Where do you want me to shoot him, in the (groin) or something?” Stidd yelled. “When someone is coming at you, should I shoot him in the foot? He was right there. That was it. He was right there.”

Cleland stopped them again, warning Wagner and Stidd.

There were no further questions at that point.

Earlier in the day, testimony began with Michelle Bizzarro on the stand. She described abuse at the hands of her husband, and lying about it to her parents. It was an episode in November 2014 that prompted her to move back into her parents’ home on East Main Street.

“Mel had been gone for a few days. It was late one evening. I was in the bedroom,” she said. He came in, shut the door and took a bench from the end of the bed, propping it against the door. “He grabbed my head and smashed it off the wall,” she said, adding he held a pillow over her face so she couldn’t breathe.

The day she moved out of the house, she had a conversation with her husband, she said. He threatened to kill her if she didn’t move out of the house. She left and didn’t return, telling her father about it later that evening.

It was with her testimony, and later on, her father’s, that information came to light about the bullet with “Mel” carved into it.

She said after Stidd’s hospitalization in 2005 from her husband’s attack, she went to see her father to apologize.

“I was hysterical crying,” she said, adding her father was trying to comfort her. He showed her the bullet. “He said, ‘It was stupid. We’re going to get Mel the help he needs.’”

When Stidd was on the stand, he said his first night home from the hospital he wasn’t able to sleep. He went to his office. The gun was on a shelf in the office. He said he took it down and pulled out a bullet.

“I thought, ‘The end of these are so soft.’ I picked up a paperclip and just for the heck of it, I wrote Mel on there. And just like that, all the stress was gone.”

He said when his daughter was inconsolable, he showed her the bullet, as if to make fun of himself. He said the two had a laugh.

Muttering among Bizzarro’s family in the audience could be heard, with someone saying, “Yeah, that’s hilarious.”

“I wanted to work it out with Mel,” Stidd said.

Both he and his daughter talked about Bizzarro’s drug and alcohol addiction, and five trips to rehab, some of which were paid for by Stidd.

Michelle Bizzarro said her husband was very easy to talk to “when he wasn’t messed up on drugs.” When he was using, she said, “He became a violent monster. He was very scary, very intimidating. It was like night and day. He became a different person.”

Also on the stand Monday were Barb Stidd, wife of the accused, who described what she witnessed. Defense counsel James P. Miller played a tape of her call to 911.

Arnold Sirline, James Segue and Timothy Nichols, all employees of Togi’s, testified, as did Bradford City Police Assistant Chief Mike Ward and Grant Nichols, publisher of The Bradford Journal.

All three employees talked about being threatened or physically struck by Bizzarro at some point. Ward, a nephew of Stidd’s, said Michelle Bizzarro had started texting him in December 2014 with concerns about her safety because she was leaving her husband.

And Nichols told of an incident when he was to meet BIzzarro at Togi’s to discuss advertising, but instead was threatened.

At the end of the day, the defense rested.

The trial will resume at 9 a.m. today, presumably with closing arguments from the attorneys. The jury should have the case for deliberations sometime today.