FARGO (KFGO) – On the final day of witness testimony, Arthur Kollie’s attorney called the accused killer’s sister to the stand as well as counselors and employees from Fraser, where Kollie was seeking assistance as part of the nonprofit’s transitional services program.
The drop-in center manager, Anastasia Glasser, testified that she last saw Kollie a day or two before Jupiter Paulsen was murdered on June 4, 2021. “We noticed some more like auditory hallucinations may be that he was responding to, nothing super aggressive or out of character for him, just seemed like he was struggling a little bit with his mental health,” Glasser told the district court jury.
Glasser said Kollie frequently appeared to be speaking to someone who was not there.
A counselor who assessed Kollie at the end of May 2021 testified that she diagnosed him with unspecified psychosis.
Kollie’s sister, Princess Harris, said she believed her brother was suffering from paranoia and it had gotten worse over time. She testified that Kollie would rather stay in a homeless shelter than at his home because he believed someone was watching him. “He called me to pick him up from his apartment, he said there was someone in his hallway with a machete trying to kill him, so I had to go pick him up and he spent the night at my apartment,” Harris said.
Prosecutors said Harris hadn’t seen her brother for months before they allege he killed Paulsen and that the Fraser workers were not qualified to speak to his mental state on the day of the killing.
Closing arguments are scheduled for Thursday morning.
