Terre Logsdon – Record-Bee staff
CLEARLAKE The teenager accused of stabbing and killing a Clearlake man in March will be back in court today to settle the matter of who his lawyer will be.
Bruce Emerson Wells, 17, of Clearlake will be tried as an adult for the murder of 54-year-old Samuel Shull. Wells has not yet entered his plea.
On April 25, Wells was assigned to public defender Dave Markham. However, Markham is leaving the Public Defender”s contract, according to the case”s prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney David McKillop. So now Wells must either hire his own attorney or be assigned another public defender.
Wells has not yet entered a plea for the one count of murder he has been charged with, coupled with a special enhancement for using a knife as a murder weapon.
According to a Clearlake Police Department report, Wells allegedly stabbed Shull in the chest with a knife on March 24. The police report indicated that Wells and Shull “were previous acquaintances,” however Shull”s widow, Linda Rines-Shull, previously told the Record-Bee that neither she nor her deceased husband had ever met him before that night.
Wells was at the Shulls” home accompanying a person whom they did know.
Rines-Shull has said that Wells was asked to leave because he was seemingly drunk and began acting belligerently. The teen did leave, only to return within a few minutes and begin throwing rocks at the house.
On that rainy night, as Rines-Shull previously told the Record-Bee, she watched from the porch as her husband approached the youth to talk to him, only to turn around and call for help, saying, “He”s killed me. Call 911.”
Wells returns to court in Department 4 in Clearlake.
Contact Terre Logsdon at tlogsdon@record-bee.com.
