OAKLAND (BCN) — A man who fatally shot an unarmed man in Oakland’s Fruitvale district in 2013 told jurors Thursday that he opened fire because he thought the other man was the person who had shot him the previous year and believed the man was going to shoot him again.

Jose Lepe, 32, said that when he saw 20-year-old Michael “Mikey” Stenger in the 3100 block Coolidge Avenue at about 11 p.m. on Dec. 1, 2013, “I was feeling scared because I was looking at the guy who had already tried to kill me.”

Lepe had 13 shots fired at him at 35th Avenue and Davis Street in Oakland the night of Feb. 22, 2012, inflicting several gunshot wounds that kept him hospitalized for more than a month.

Lepe, who had glasses and long hair pulled into a ponytail and was dressed in a white shirt, gray sweater and a tie, said, “I thought he (Stenger) was there to kill me and was reaching into his pocket to pull out a gun.”

Prosecutor Patrick Moriarty said in his opening statement earlier this week that Lepe told Oakland police while he was in the hospital that he thought Stenger was the man who shot him in 2012, but the case wasn’t solved and remained open until the night that he killed Stenger.

Moriarty said Lepe and Stenger met up by chance on the night of Dec. 1, 2013, because there was a less-than-ideal situation in which Stenger, who was unemployed and homeless, wound up living in the same apartment with Lepe’s ex-girlfriend and her 1-year-old daughter, who was Lepe’s child, because he was a family friend and needed a place to stay.

Moriarty said Stenger had gone with a friend to get some food and the friend dropped him off outside the apartment complex at the same time that Lepe, who lived elsewhere and had borrowed a friend’s car, pulled up to the complex to pick up his ex-girlfriend and their daughter because his ex-girlfriend wanted him to buy diapers for their daughter.

Lepe said he’d been holding his daughter in his arms but when he saw Stenger, he gave the baby girl to his girlfriend, pulled his gun out of his pocket and shot Stenger when Stenger walked to within 7 feet of his car.

Lepe said he drove away after the shooting and returned the car to his friend, telling his friend to “get rid of it,” and put his gun in a recycling bin.

Asked by his lawyer, Ernie Castillo, why he told his friend to get rid of the car, Lepe said, “Because I was scared and I panicked.”

When Castillo asked why he didn’t call police to report the shooting, Lepe said, “I freaked out, I panicked.”

Under cross-examination by Moriarty, Lepe admitted that he never saw Stenger with a gun in either hand but said he thought Stenger had a gun because one of his hands was in his pocket.

Lepe said he thought Stenger had recognized him but admitted that Stenger didn’t wave at him or say anything to him.

Lepe said he bought a 9mm Glock handgun at a swap meet for $400 to defend himself because, “I lived in fear of Mikey” after he was shot in 2012.

Moriarty said Lepe shouldn’t have been carrying a gun because when a judge sentenced him for a domestic violence conviction in 2011, he ordered him not to possession any firearms for 10 years.

But Lepe said he didn’t realize he was breaking the law by carrying a gun the night that Stenger was killed. He said that was the first time he’d ever fired a gun so Moriarty asked him how learned to shoot a gun.

“I watched a lot of movies, you see what’s going on. There’s a lot of action movies, like ‘Bad Boys,’ that’s a good one,” Lepe said.