Accused killer Jose E. Ramos smiled at his younger sister while she sat on the witness stand at his murder trial in Norwich on Tuesday, even after she implicated him in the 2008 shooting death of Tynel Hardwick.

Ramos, 32, is accused of retrieving a rifle at his sister's Norwich apartment and shooting Hardwick, 29, in the head following a dispute at Rumors Bar & Grill on Oct. 10, 2008. 

His sister, Shavonna Kincade, testified that her brother, who she said was prone to fabrication, told her he had retrieved a rifle that he kept at her house and shot someone after a dispute at the bar.

The dispute, she said, was about somebody getting spit on "because of someone not saying hello to someone else."

"What was said to me was that Jose had entered my home, took the weapon and went back out to use it," she testified.

At first he said, in a phone conversation, that he walked up to "the guy" and shot him in the face, she said. Later, when they were together, he told her he shot him from across the street, Kincade testified.

Kincade said she and her brother had been adopted as young children into separate families in Norwich but that they remained close throughout their lives.

"I love my brother," she said. "He's is always the most polite, I mean, he's got a heart of gold."

When Ramos told her he shot a man, she said, she didn't believe him and suspected he was trying to cover up for somebody.

But as time went on, she said she put herself "in the shoes" of the victim's mother and made an anonymous phone call to police "in case there was a sliver of a chance" that Ramos was involved.

Kincade's mother-in-law, Linda Kincade, testified that she was babysitting for her son and daughter-in-law one night in October when Ramos climbed in through a first-floor bedroom window of the Elizabeth Street apartment and said he had to retrieve some of his belongings from under a bed.

She said she did not see what Ramos took.

"He just kept apologizing for intruding and waking me up and breaking in," she testified.

According to his sister, Ramos lived in Hartford but frequently stayed at her house. She said he once brought a long gun into her bedroom and showed it to her, excited "like a child with a new toy," but with no apparent intention to use it illegally.

She said he told her he would leave the gun at her apartment, since she was concerned about a former boyfriend, but she said she told him she didn't need the weapon and was not aware he had left it under the bed.

During cross-examination, Ramos' attorney, Bruce B. McIntyre, called into question Shavonna Kincade's ability to remember accurately, revealing she suffered from mental illness and was under medication at the time of the incident and in 2012, when she spoke with police.

McIntyre also got her to admit that she sometimes saw things during that time, such as "a spaceship. A large spaceship" and that her brother, who was with her, saw it as well.

She also said that the Elizabeth Street apartment was haunted and that she was too frightened to sleep in her bedroom, where Ramos allegedly stored the rifle. She said that instead of seeing people's faces, she sometimes sees masses of color.

She went on to say that with the proper medication and counseling, her condition is greatly improved.

Under further questioning by prosecutor Lawrence J. Tytla, Kincade said there was no doubt about what her brother had told her.

"There's doubt about whether it's true," she said.

k.florin@theday.com

Twitter: @KFLORIN