TIONESTA, Forest County — “My name is Ruth Angert, and I just shot my husband.”

That's what Ruth Maxine Angert, 59, of Clearfield Township, Butler County, told a dispatcher why she was calling 911 the night of Nov. 17, 2012.

Angert's gripping 911 call about 10:30 p.m. was played to jurors — even before the first witness took the stand — as her homicide trial got under way Thursday in Forest County Court.

Angert is accused of fatally shooting 68-year-old Larry Angert with his own .38-caliber revolver during an argument at the couple's camp just outside Tionesta.

Ruth Angert, who has been held in the Warren County Jail without bail since her arrest, is charged with homicide, attempted homicide, aggravated assault, attempted aggravated assault and involuntary manslaughter.

The prosecution began its case Thursday morning and by evening had rested it, calling six witnesses.

But it was two recordings — the 22-minute 911 tape and Angert's 45-minute audiotaped interview with state police — that had most of the 12 jurors and four alternates on the edge of their seats.

Calm throughout, the dispatcher, after inquiring where Angert was calling from and why, asked Angert the question that appears to be at the crux of the case.

“Was it accidental or intentional?” asked the woman at the Venango County Communications Center, where the call went.

Stammering for several seconds, she replied, “It was an accident — but I did have a gun in my hand.”

An accidental shooting is Angert's defense. She would make that same case during her interview at the Marienville barracks after being arrested.

But Forest County District Attorney Elizabeth Ziegler contends that when Angert fatally shot her husband of six years, she acted “intentionally, knowingly, recklessly or negligently,” the elements needed to prove homicide.

According to testimony, the couple's fateful night began when they attended a gun and turkey raffle at the Tionesta fire hall.

While there, Angert admitted she got mad at her husband and left, opting to walk the two miles back to camp.

She told Trooper Jason Wagner, the lead investigator who interviewed Angert, she caught Larry Angert ogling and making “sexual gestures at” women attending the raffle.

“Larry lusts after other women,” she said in the recorded interview.

She acknowledged the two had a “very rocky marriage,” and they had previously gone to counseling for their marital problems, which she said included her husband's constant verbal abuse.

The couple married in 2006. For each, it was a second marriage.

At the time of the shooting, Ruth Angert worked at the Irene Stacy Community Mental Health Center's on-site psychiatric rehabilitation program in Butler. Larry Angert was retired.

Angert said when she got back to their camp, she had no key to get inside and had to wait for her husband to return. He eventually drove back in his pickup truck.

They began arguing almost as soon as they got inside. She let him know she was angry at his behavior at the raffle.

“I told him I just wish you looked at me like you look at them,” she said, referring to the other women.

She claimed Larry Angert instructed her to pack her bags and leave. However, she told Wagner her car battery was dead and she had no way to leave on her own.

Larry Angert had consumed beer at the raffle and had sat down on the living room couch with another beer.

A toxicology report from Larry Angert's autopsy showed his blood-alcohol level at the time of death was 0.093 percent, testified forensic pathologist Dr. Eric Vey, who conducted the autopsy.

A level of 0.08 percent is considered intoxicated for drivers under state law.

Ruth Angert consumed no alcohol that night. She said she doesn't drink.

Before long, the arguing turned violent, Angert said. She claimed he shoved her and she fell to the floor.

“He's on top of me,” she said. She claimed at one point he had his hands around her throat. Later, she described Larry Angert holding her down by the shoulders.

But several of Ziegler's witnesses, including Wagner and two other state police officers who investigated the shooting, testified they saw no marks or injuries on Ruth Angert to suggest the kind of physical confrontation she described during her interview.

However, on cross-examination by Angert's attorney, public defender Todd Woodin, those same witnesses conceded they never bothered to examine her shoulders or lower back for injuries.

During the interview, Angert said after the purported fight that landed her and Larry on the floor, the two got up, and she immediately headed for the kitchen table.

On the table was a canvas bag that held her husband's .38 Special. The gun was in a holster belt.

“I didn't know if it was loaded. I know nothing about guns,” she told Wagner. “I don't know what possessed me to pick it up.”

She said her husband was back on the couch and he could see her go for the gun. He got up and moved toward her.

“It was quick. It was quick,” she said in the taped interview. “He was right there.”

She managed to get the revolver out of the holster and held it.

Wagner asked if she pointed the gun at her husband.

“I didn't get the chance,” she replied.

Angert said her husband reached for the gun, putting his hand on her right hand, which held the revolver.

“It just went off,” she said, acknowledging her finger was on the trigger when she first got hold of the gun.

Wagner, during the interview, asked what she was thinking when she went for the gun.

“I just grabbed it out of the bag,” she said. “I wasn't thinking. I just reacted because it was there.”

Vey testified the bullet entered Larry's left lower cheek, taking an upward trajectory and traveling behind his left eye socket and out the top of his head.

But he was unable to say how close Angert was to her husband when he was shot. He also could not say for certain if Larry Angert was standing as he was shot, as Woodin seemed to suggest.

After the gun fired, Angert said her husband fell to the floor. She removed his denture partial, which was hanging out of his mouth, so she could administer CPR.

“He was gurgling.” she told Wagner. She called 911.

“I think he's breathing,” she advised the dispatcher, who provided Angert with specific CPR instructions.

She can be heard in a frantic voice repeatedly saying, “Oh my god.”

At one point, she blurted out, “What did I do?”

But by the time police and emergency medical technicians got to the camp, Larry Angert was dead, according to testimony.

Woodin, meanwhile, managed to win a couple concessions from Wagner during cross-examination.

The trooper conceded that Ruth Angert's explanation of the events, as recounted on the recorded 911 call and interview, were not inconsistent with what police found at the crime scene.

Wagner said he also was unable to subsequently determine if Angert lied during her interview.

The trial resumes at 9 a.m. today and jury deliberations could begin later in the day once Woodin presents his case.