”I knew for a fact that I was going to get shot,” Cardell Hayes, 29, told the jury in his second-degree murder trial, adding that he heard a pop that he believed to be a gunshot before he fired. Hayes also insisted he didn’t shoot Smith’s wife Racquel that night. Prosecutors say ballistics evidence shows otherwise.

Hayes’ defense lawyers rested their case Saturday afternoon, setting the stage for closing arguments and the beginning of jury deliberations Sunday.

On the stand, Hayes vehemently denied intentionally running into Smith’s Mercedes SUV moments after the Mercedes appeared to have bumped Hayes’ car. He said he armed himself only after he and his own passenger were accosted by Smith and Richard Hernandez, a passenger in the SUV. Hernandez, he said, wildly stripped off his shirt and took something shiny from his pocket – Hayes said he feared it was a knife.

Smith didn’t initially notice the gun, Hayes said. He said Smith, 34, threw a cup containing some type of alcohol at him and punched him repeatedly. At some point during the fast-unfolding melee, Hernandez alerted Smith to Hayes’ gun, Hayes said under questioning from defense lawyer John Fuller.

Hayes testified that Smith addressed him with a racial epithet and then told him, ”… you got your gun. Well I’m going to get mine and I’ll show you what to do with it.”

Hayes said Hernandez, a white Hispanic who fled the scene, also used racial epithets.

However, race has not been raised as an alleged factor in the confrontation. Hayes and Kevin O’Neal, his passenger, are black, and so was Smith.

Hayes was calm and soft spoken under questioning from Fuller, his voice catching briefly as he noted that he has been jailed since the shooting, unable to be with his 6-year-old son. He was the only witness to place a gun in Smith’s hand that night. Police say a loaded gun was found in Smith’s SUV. Prosecutors say it was never fired that night and that Smith never grabbed it.

Hayes fired a .45-caliber handgun numerous times. Racquel Smith was hit twice in the legs, and Will Smith once in the side and seven times in the back. Hayes and others have testified that she tried to calm her husband that night. Some prosecution witnesses say she appeared to have done so and that there was no apparent reason for Hayes to fire.

On cross examination, Assistant Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Napoli repeatedly noted that no other witness said Smith had a gun and that Hayes never told investigators he saw a gun in Smith’s hands that night.

”I never gave a full statement to anyone,” Hayes said, growing testy as Napoli asked about inconsistencies in his testimony and past statements.

Prosecutors also called a rebuttal witness – a firearms expert who said there was no evidence Smith had fired a gun when he died.

The first witnesses called Saturday were friends of Hayes who said he was in a good mood and was not drinking at a party before the crash. Among Saturday morning’s spectators was Saints coach Sean Payton. Smith was a defensive leader on the Payton-coached Saints team that won the 2010 Super Bowl.

Prosecutors rested their case Friday after nearly a week of hearing from witnesses, including Racquel Smith.

She and Smith’s former teammate Pierre Thomas were among prosecution witnesses who said Smith’s anger seemed to have cooled before the gunfire. But Hayes’ passenger in the Hummer insisted that Smith and others with him were the aggressors.

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A defense lawyer for Cardell Hayes countered that he fired in self-defense, fearing that the angry NFL star was fetching a gun from his SUV’s glove box during their heated argument following a traffic accident.

Attorneys on both sides have suggested that Louisiana’s ”stand your ground” law will be at issue during the trial of Hayes, 29, who faces life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder. He’s also charged with attempted murder after wounding the retired NFL player’s wife, Racquel Smith.

Video showed Smith’s SUV appearing to bump into Hayes’ Hummer before, blocks later, the Hummer slammed into Smith’s car. Both men then got out and exchanged angry words as Hayes displayed his handgun. Exactly what happened next will be the focus of the trial.

Hayes’ lawyer, Jay Daniels, says the aggressors were Smith and the friends who were out with him and his wife that night last April. And he says Hayes only fired after Smith reached for his own gun.

”Will Smith went to his glove box to get his gun,” Daniels insisted.

Assistant New Orleans District Attorney Jason Napoli rejected that idea in his opening statement. He said nothing corroborates the defense claim that Smith was going back to his car to get a gun when Hayes shot him, but even if that were true, it wouldn’t justify shooting him in the back.

”That isn’t even close to self-defense,” Napoli said. ”That’s murder.”

Smith was shot once in the right side and seven times in the back. Napoli said that physical evidence indicates that Smith was facing Hayes when he was first shot, and not reaching for a gun in his car.

Napoli also said that Hayes provoked the confrontation by willfully ramming his Hummer into Smith’s SUV. Hayes’s lawyer countered that it was an accident, and blamed it on Hayes looking at his phone and trying to dial 911 to report the SUV’s license number after Smith drove away from the earlier contact.

Napoli conceded that Smith was intoxicated that night, but downplayed the significance, telling the jury that the irony of Smith’s death is that the defensive football star ”died defenseless.”

A 12-member jury was seated late Monday after potential jurors were asked about their attitudes on lethal self-defense. They also were asked whether they can put aside opinions formed amid intense media coverage of Smith’s death, and any feelings about Smith’s popularity as an NFL star.

Smith was a defensive leader on the 2006 Saints team that helped lift the stricken city’s spirits with a winning season after Hurricane Katrina. He played with the team when New Orleans won the franchise’s only Super Bowl three seasons later.

Hayes is a former semiprofessional football player, owner of a tow-truck company and the father of a 5-year-old son. Hayes is described by friends as soft-spoken and even-tempered – not the type to erupt into a lethal road rage.

Jurors will be sequestered during a trial lawyers said could last seven to 10 days.

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Ten or so gunshots later, one driver is dead and the other waits nervously to give his side of the story to police.

Conflicts settled by gunfire are tragically common in New Orleans but there was nothing routine about this one: the dead man was retired football player Will Smith, a star on the 2006 Saints team that help lift the stricken city’s spirits with a winning season after Hurricane Katrina, and on the team that won the franchise’s only Super Bowl three seasons later.

The accused is a 29-year-old former semiprofessional football player named Cardell Hayes. The owner of a tow-truck company and the father of a 5-year-old son, Hayes is described by friends as soft-spoken, even-tempered – hardly the type to erupt into a lethal road rage. His attorney has been laying the groundwork for a self-defense argument ahead of a trial that opens Monday, but he may face an added burden in Smith’s local popularity and national renown.

”Will Smith obviously was a beloved member of the New Orleans community,” Loyola University law professor Dane Ciolino said in a recent interview. ”And that’s going to make the defense of this case all the more difficult.”

Smith’s shooting death is strangely similar to that of Joe McKnight, another former NFL player who was shot and killed just last Thursday in a New Orleans suburb after a road rage incident on a nearby bridge spiraled out of control. The man authorities identified as the shooter in that case – Ronald Gasser – has been released from custody with no charges as the investigation continues.

Hayes has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in Smith’s death. Conviction carries a mandatory life sentence. He’s also charged with attempted second-degree murder in the wounding of Smith’s wife, who was shot in the legs. He’s been jailed since the April shooting, unable to make the $1.75 million bond.

Snippets of surveillance video from near the scene, police statements plus testimony from pre-trial hearings paint this picture of what happened on April 9:

Smith, his wife and two friends left a restaurant in New Orleans’ Lower Garden District and were heading downtown on Magazine Street. At one point Smith’s SUV appeared to bump the rear of a Hummer that had come to a stop on the street.

Rather than stop, Smith swerved his SUV around the Hummer and continued downtown. Moments later, the Hummer hit Smith’s SUV from behind, shattering the rear window and pushing it into the rear of another car – in which more friends of Smith were riding.

Who the aggressors were in the ensuing conflict will be at issue in the trial. Hayes acknowledged to at least one police officer that he was armed when he got out of his vehicle. He said he was accosted by an unarmed Smith and others, and that Smith struck him, although police said there were no obvious signs of injury.

The first officer to approach the scene after the crash was an off-duty rookie who had been at a nearby bar. Christopher McGaw has testified that he approached the scene as the argument grew more heated, ducked for cover when gunshots rang out, then approached again, finding Smith slumped across the front seat of his car, one hand extended toward the glove box.

”What was I supposed to do?” Hayes is heard asking McGaw, on a recording of a 911 call McGaw had placed at the scene.

Why Smith drove away from the scene of the first, apparently minor accident; whether Hayes intentionally rammed Smith’s vehicle moments later; whether Smith was reaching for a gun when he was shot to death – all are issues that will likely be addressed at trial.

On the side of the defense is a toxicology report showing that Smith was legally drunk at the time of his death. Other factors Ciolino cited: ”The fact that Will Smith was, by some reports, so loud and belligerent; the fact that the forensic evidence, arguably could support that Will Smith was reaching for a gun.”

Smith had returned to his SUV when he was shot and police said there was a loaded gun in the vehicle. That might help the defense argument that Hayes shot in self-defense, Ciolino said. But it’s an argument that could be blunted by the fact that Smith was shot eight times – seven in the back, one in the side – Ciolino added.

Prosecutors also have made much of the fact that Hayes’s Hummer had hit Smith’s SUV from behind so hard that the rear window shattered.

Another odd twist in the case: A friend of Smith’s who wound up at the scene the night of the shooting is William Ceravolo, a retired New Orleans police officer who had dined with the Smiths before the accident. Ceravolo was among six officers sued by Hayes after police killed his father, Anthony Hayes, in December 2005. Police settled the lawsuit in 2011, and terms were confidential.

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