CROWN POINT | James "Jimmy" Comanse Jr. shot 18-year-old Marcus "Boogie" Ponce in self-defense, attorney Nick Thiros told potential Lake Criminal Court jurors Monday.

Deputy prosecutors Armando Salinas and Robert Neary and Thiros selected jurors Monday to hear the case against Comanse.

Comanse, 26, of Hammond, is accused of fatally shooting Ponce in 2007 in East Chicago, Lake Criminal Court records state.

Ponce was declared dead at St. Catherine Hospital with 13 or 14 wounds in his upper left torso and armpit.

Witnesses told police both men had attended a birthday party for a 1-year-old distant relative of Comanse in the rented banquet hall of a social club earlier in the afternoon.

Ponce argued with a teenage male relative of Comanse at the party, court records state.

The birthday party ended at 5 p.m., and club officials said the rental facility was cleared out a short time later.

Ponce called a relative about 7:30 p.m. to have her pick him up near his home in the city's Indiana Harbor section, police said.

The relative picked up Ponce and two other men at Broadway and Pulaski Street, and Ponce asked her to take them back to the social club, police said.

She said they pulled off of Indianapolis Boulevard near the access road to the club and parked next to a car in which she said Comanse was sitting, court records state.

Ponce and one of the other men jumped out of her car, she told police, and Comanse fired what she said looked like a black shotgun.

Ponce fell to the ground, and his relative and the other man picked him up and put him in the back seat of the car. They drove to the St. Catherine emergency room, police said.