A dog barked and pressed its nose against the screen of a window to look out onto the porch at Andrew Staggs.
"That's the dog that pretty much saved my life," Staggs said last Wednesday.
It's hard now for Staggs to talk about the incident that resulted in him being charged in March 2015 with murder and malicious wounding, but there was a time when talking and telling his side of the story was all he wanted to do.
"I was advised so many times, 'Don't talk,' " Staggs said, recalling how frustrated he felt in the days after the incident. "I didn't get to tell my side until 14 months later."
A Lincoln County jury found him not guilty of the charges last month.
It's been a little more than a year since Staggs accidentally shot and killed his daughter-in-law, Katie Toler, and wounded her ex-husband, Chad Mays.
"I lost a lot. I lost a lot because of this whole scenario," Staggs said. "And just to find out it ended up being my own daughter-in-law that died from all this," his voice trailed off.
It was late, about 10:45 p.m., when Staggs' son, Jesse Toler, 19, of Connecticut, got into town on March 30, 2015.
Toler's dad had bought him a truck and he insisted on seeing it that night, Staggs recalled.
The two drove to Staggs' barn near Tornado, in Lincoln County, where the truck was parked. It still needed a little work before it was ready to drive.
The father and son spent about an hour inside the barn working on the truck before Staggs' dog, Zena, a black Labrador, began barking incessantly.
"She was doing more than barking," Staggs recalled. "I thought she was getting attacked by a coyote ... When you're there at night you can tell if your dog is barking at another dog. It sounded like she was in an animal fight or something. It was real vicious."
"I said, 'Jesse, go see what that was or what that is.' I was standing on the truck. While he went to go see what it was, I went and grabbed my shotgun. He came back and said, 'Dad, there's somebody outside,' so I put my shotgun back down," Staggs said.
A man had unwound the chain to Staggs' fence and looked startled when Staggs looked at him. He didn't say anything and ran off, according to Staggs.
"I walked out to my road to try to see what was going on. It was so dark I couldn't see," Staggs recalled. "I didn't even see the car. I just heard the door close and then an engine start. Then the lights came at me and I backed up to my fence because I didn't want him to run me over.
"I guess to make a long story short, they passed me up, went around the corner, where I couldn't see them. He came back with a baseball bat with a flashlight taped to the end of it," Staggs said.
At the time, Staggs didn't know who the man was. He also didn't know there was someone else in the car.
The man began yelling profanities, Staggs said. He then raised the bat.
"He was trying to take my head off with that bat. I faded back," Staggs said. He leaned back in his chair while describing the incident.
"The last thing I ever wanted to do was shoot anybody. From the beginning, I would've aimed that gun at him, but I couldn't even pick up the gun to aim it at a man. I left it down at my side. I thought maybe if he seen I had a gun he would just leave," Staggs said.
With the gun at his side, Staggs said he fired a shot as he leaned back, trying to avoid being hit with the bat.
"I guess when I came back to my senses, after that first shot, I noticed he was still in front of me getting ready to take my head off. I decided to shoot more than once is all I can say. I don't know."
Katie Toler was in the car and had been shot, Staggs later learned. She was on the phone with 911 during the incident.
Staggs' lawyer, Dan Holstein, said that at trial, jurors were shown evidence that the light inside the vehicle didn't work. There also weren't any lights on Coal River Road, where the incident occurred, Holstein said.
"It was so dark there's no way [Staggs] would have seen that she was in the car," Holstein said.
According to State Police, Katie Toler and Staggs had been in a dispute over a car and other items at the time of the incident.
Staggs says that wasn't true and points out that Mays is currently in jail on charges of breaking and entering in Cabell County.
"This was all because of him," Staggs said of Mays. "And he is back in jail for doing the same thing - going back to someone's property in the middle of the night."
Putnam County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Sorsaia, who was assigned to the case as a special prosecutor, couldn't be reached for comment last week.
Staggs said it seemed like all of the jurors were giving him mean looks as they walked back into the courtroom after reaching a verdict.
"They had their poker faces on," he said with a laugh.
Before finding out jurors had found him not guilty, Staggs said he kept thinking about how he had been offered a deal that would have allowed him to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and receive a one to five year prison sentence.
"I said, 'If they find me guilty for protecting my life and my son's life at 2:30 in the morning, I guess I'll just go to jail,'" he recalled. The jurors "are people just like me that work for a living and have property, I wanted to talk to them and tell my side."
Staggs said he's now had to explain his side of the story more times than he's wanted to and he's had to explain it to people he never thought he'd have to.
Since the trial, Staggs has returned to his job as a cab driver at C&H Taxi.
"Everybody there was happy to see me," he said.
But some friends and family didn't stick around to see him acquitted of the charges.
"I tried to ask God, because there's always a reason for things, I guess. The only thing I can think is to let me know who really loved me and who didn't. It's a shame to say that, but I guess he separated the real from the fake," Staggs said.
He looked over at the window. Zena was there staring at him.
"You ready?" he asked her. They had plans that day to go to the cabin so Zena could swim in the river.
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.