LACROSSE, Wis. – Two witnesses testified that Lori Ann and Mark Phillips had argued during a night of bar-hopping that preceded his death. A bartender at The Dive, a diny bar near Grandad Bluff, testified that Mark was acting badly. A close friend of Lori Ann’s, also at the bar, told the same story on the witness stand. The friend said the couple’s arguing continued in the parking lot as they left. These were defense witnesses. It is Lori Ann’s story that Mark was mean when drunk. On the night he died she was fleeing their Holmen home after returning from The Dive , she said. Prosecutors claim she intentionally ran him down with her pickup truck in their driveway and kept on going. Her defense is that she didn’t realize that she had driven him down.
Lori Ann testimony
On the witness stand, Lori Ann recited a timeline of her relationship with Mark from dating, breaking up, engaging again, and marrying. She talked about heavy drinking and domestic abuse. “He would call me names – ‘slut, whore’ — things like that,” Phillips said. “I mean, this only happened when he was drunk.” She was specific about incidents. In one incident, she said, Mark had begun drinking at 7:30 a.m. and continued all day. At night when he came home, she said, she locked the door but he broke through: “I called the police because my husband was drunk and running for a gun, and he was upset.”
Happier moment. Lori Ann and Mark began dating in 2016, married in 2018. He died in February 2019. When he died, Mark was 48, she 46.