Alternately calm and combative, Adam Hamilton took to the witness stand Thursday to testify in his own defense.

Hamilton, 35, 2718 22nd St., who is charged with two counts of attempted first-degree murder, a single charge of attempted second-degree murder and one count of aggravated criminal contempt in the shooting of Falls police Officers Walt Nichols, Mike Bird and his estranged girlfriend Stephanie Turk, said he wielded a rifle and shotgun in the early morning hours of Feb. 7, 2009, to scare Turk and protect himself from police.

“I felt I had to defend myself,” Hamilton told the six man, six woman jury hearing his case. “I thought (police) were going to kill me. I thought they were going to kill (Turk).”

However, under a withering cross-examination from Assistant District Attorney Brian Seaman, Hamilton could not explain how his thumbprint ended up on a map and outline of the attack on Turk or why a receipt for handcuffs and pepper spray, purchased the day before his South Avenue shootout, was found in a car he had rented.

Under careful questioning by lead defense attorney Joel Daniels, Hamilton denied stalking Turk after the break-up of their 11 year relationship. Hours before the attack, Hamilton said he went to Seneca Niagara Casino to gamble and have dinner.

He said he parked in the same parking lot where Turk’s car was parked as she worked at TeleTech, but did not see her vehicle. Yet when Seaman asked him about a parking lot ticket that showed he had been in the lot adjacent to TeleTech up to eight hours before he claimed to have arrived there, Hamilton’s voice rose and he repeatedly said, “I wasn’t there. I couldn’t have been there. I was in school at that date and time.”

After gambling and having a couple of drinks, Hamilton said he returned to his rental car and began to “think about Stephanie and the kids and the deteriorating relationship we had.”

“I began to cry,” he told Daniels. “I was upset. We had two kids together. I thought everything was pretty good at the time.”

Then Hamilton said he decided to take a walk to “cool down.” The walk led him from First Street to South Avenue. Hamilton said he believed that Turk was possibly seeing another man and, “I thought I needed to talk to her, just have some words with her.”

Hamilton admitted he strolled over to South Avenue with a pair of handcuffs on his hip and a can of pepper spray, but when he arrived he didn’t see Turk’s car outside her mother’s home in the 1000 block there. He told Daniels the pepper spray had come from Turk’s car, where she had it for “a long time.”

After failing to find Turk, Hamilton said he went to a nearby home and warmed his hands under a dryer vent and then retrieved a rifle and shotgun he had hidden in the trunk of the tree at the rear of another South Avenue home. He said he had noticed the tree during a period of time when he and Turk lived in the 1000 block of South Avenue.

The guns, Hamilton said, were wrapped in plastic along with shotguns shells and .22-caliber ammunition. He said he had taken the guns out of the home he had shared with Turk after their break-up and after he was served with a court-issued order of protection a couple of weeks earlier.

Hamilton said the guns were both loaded but insisted he had never fired them. When Daniels asked Hamilton why he needed the guns, he said he wanted to “scare” Turk.

“I was still upset. I knew she wasn’t going to be truthful,” Hamilton said. “I wanted to scare her into telling the truth.”

Moments later, when Turk’s car pulled up on South Avenue, Hamilton said he walked over to the vehicle, the rifle in his hand and the shotgun slung over his shoulder, and opened the door.

“She yelled and screamed,” Hamilton said. “I told her, ‘Tell me the truth, are you seeing someone else?’ She said, ‘Baby, wait, don’t do this.’ She wasn’t really telling me what I was asking her and I fired a shot in the air.”

Hamilton told Daniels he did that “to scare her.”

After firing the rifle a second time, into the ground in another attempt to “scare” Turk, Hamilton said he saw blood on Turk’s foot and tried to get her back in her car to take her to the hospital.

“She said, ‘You shot me. My God, you shot me.’ I told her, ‘I didn’t mean to.’ ”

Turk then ran across the street and up onto the porch of a house. Hamilton said she was banging on the door and asking the person inside to call police.

“I saw Stephanie look to the right and I turned and looked and saw a police SUV pulling up,” Hamilton said. “I took the shotgun off my shoulder and I put it and the rifle in the air and took one step down off the porch. I was trying to surrender and get away from (Turk). I wasn’t trying to make the situation worse than it was.”

Hamilton said as he stepped down he heard “pop, pop” and “something hit me in the arm. It knocked the rifle out of my hand and I saw Stephanie clutch her side and go to the ground. I turned and fired back at where the shots came from. I felt I had to defend myself, I was shot for no reason.”

After that, Hamilton admitted he emptied his shotgun in a battle with police. Then he said he was shot in his leg, thigh and knee and fell to the porch.

Sources said Hamilton took the stand over the objection of Daniels. Outside the courtroom, the veteran defense attorney said he stood by his client’s decision.

“A defendant has a right to testify,” Daniels said. “(Hamilton) choose to testify.”

During cross-examination, Hamilton struggled to explain where to got the sawed-off shotgun, rifle and ammunition from. He also lacked an explanation for hiding the guns in the trunk of tree nowhere near his home.

“You didn’t put the guns in the trunk of a tree on Willow Avenue (where he lived with a relative). You didn’t put the guns in the trunk of a tree at a friend’s house. You put them in a tree trunk next to Stephanie Turk’s mom’s house where you knew she was staying,” Seaman charged.

“Yes,” Hamilton replied.

Pacing back and forth in front of the jury and repeatedly pumping the action on the shotgun, Seaman asked Hamilton about taking the safety off the loaded weapon.

“You wanted to scare her,” the assistant DA said. “Wasn’t pointing a gun (without loading it or taking safety off) scary enough?”

Hamilton said he was never in the trunk of Turk’s car, as prosecutors claimed, but could not explain how shotgun shells and other ammunition he claimed was in his pockets ended up in the vehicle. Asked about the sales receipt for the pepper spray and handcuffs, Hamilton shot back, “I have no idea. Are my fingerprints on (the receipt)?”

When Seaman asked about how his thumbprint got on the apparent outline of the attack on Turk on a page of notebook paper, Hamilton said he might have, at one time, picked up a notebook in the trunk of her car and touched one of the pages.

Closing arguments in the case and jury deliberations are now expected to take place on Tuesday.