Lawyers for the state and accused murderer David J. Grant focused on the issue of intent Monday as they delivered closing arguments at Grant's trial in New London Superior Court.

A 12-member jury that heard four days of testimony last week will begin deliberating today.

Grant, 35, of Brooklyn, N.Y., is charged with fatally shooting 45-year-old Donna Richardson and wounding her niece, Crystal Roderick, as the women stood on the balcony of the Mai Thai Restaurant in Norwich at closing time on June 24, 2012. The state has charged Grant with murder, first-degree assault and criminal possession of a firearm.

At the request of the defense, Judge Barbara Bailey Jongbloed will instruct jury members that they may also consider the lesser charges of first-degree manslaughter with a firearm and second-degree manslaughter with a firearm, crimes that do not require the jury to find that Grant intended to kill.

"You're going to find, when you look, that the facts put forward by the state are largely undisputed," prosecutor Stephen M. Carney said in his summation. "It's the other issues, I think, that will take up your time. Today with DNA and videotaped confessions, we talk less about what people did when they committed these horrible acts but more about what was he thinking when he did them."

Grant, arrested in Baltimore six months after the shootings, admitted during a police interrogation, which was videotaped and shown to the jury, that he fired a gun into the crowd. He said he was scared because he had just been told that a Isaiah "Zay" Lee, who he said had shot a friend of his, was in the crowd. Grant had been shot himself about a year earlier, losing vision in one eye.

Testimony at the trial indicated that Grant had moved from New York City to Norwich to sell drugs.

Grant admitted during the interrogation that he threw the gun, along with the bullets, out the car window as he drove away from the scene with Steven "Cuda" Velez. Police recovered shell casings in a nearby parking lot and a Mohegan Sun groundskeeper found the gun in a pile of mulch. The jury heard from lab experts who indicated Grant's DNA was on the .38 caliber revolver and that bullet fragments extracted from the two victims came from the revolver. An eyewitness to the shooting, Ashleigh Hountz, testified she had seen Grant fire "aimlessly" into the crowd.

Defense attorney Sebastian O. DeSantis Grant conceded Grant committed the shooting, but said in his closing argument that his client did not intend to kill anyone.

"Yes, Donna Richardson died," DeSantis said."That's a horrible tragedy. Ms. Richardson died and Mr. Grant caused the death, but he did not intend to kill anybody. He was reckless. He was intoxicated and careless, but he didn't intend to kill anyone."

The jury will be allowed to consider whether Grant acted in self-defense.

"Self-defense is never available to the person who is the initial aggressor," the prosecutor said during his rebuttal argument.  

Grant, wearing a purple button-down shirt and tie, held the side of his face with his hand during the closing arguments. Members of his family sat behind him in the courthouse gallery.

Relatives of Richardson, including the niece, Roderick, who survived the shooting, sat on the other side of the courtroom.

 k.florin@theday.com

Twitter: @KFLORIN