Mehserle on Grant: 'I thought he could be going for a gun'

Former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle, testifying in his defense in a federal civil rights lawsuit over the shooting death of Oscar Grant, acknowledged Wednesday that he had told a fellow officer he believed Grant may have been armed when he killed him.

Mehserle, 32, was calm as he testified in San Francisco, a contrast to his 2010 criminal trial in which he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for killing the unarmed Grant at the Fruitvale BART Station in Oakland early New Year's Day 2009.

In that trial, which was moved to Los Angeles because of the scrutiny the case received in the Bay Area, Mehserle tearfully recounted that he had drawn his gun by mistake when he meant to use his electronic stun gun on Grant.

The 22-year-old Hayward man had been taken off a train for causing a disruption and had no weapon. On the stand in Los Angeles, Mehserle's friend and fellow BART Officer Terry Foreman said Mehserle had said just after the shooting that he thought Grant had a gun.