Friends of Kristen Reid believe the 30-year-old woman wanted to end her relationship with Bukurim Miftari the night she ran into him at an Anchorage strip club more than two years ago.
“They didn’t really get along that well,” said Reid’s friend, Caren Bennett.
Thursday, she fought back tears as she talked about the last night she saw her friend.
Bennett recalls that night — Sept. 16, 2012 — not just because she and Reid attended a friend’s birthday at the Great Alaska Bush Company, but because of something she says Miftari told her.
“He said to me, ‘Have you ever thought about shooting someone you loved?” Bennett recalled during the first day of testimony in Miftari’s murder trial.
Prosecutors said Reid later went to a friend’s house, then left with Miftari after he showed up and drew a gun.
Anchorage police found Reid lying naked in a ditch along Fairbanks Street the next morning. Someone had shot her in the head, and she later died at a local hospital.
Reid may have been a good friend, but, she also led a troubled life friends said they did not know.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys raised that issue during their opening statements to jurors,
“She had a husband at the time, he was away serving a sentence in jail,” said assistant district attorney Laura Dulic. “She was a drug dealer.”
Defense lawyer George Dozier believes Reid’s background will help show someone else murdered her.
Miftari could spend the rest of his life in prison is he’s convicted of the charges.