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A Tucson man on trial for first-degree murder told jurors Monday he is positive he would have been shot if he hadn't shot first.

Anthony Gabriel Pesqueira, 21, testified Victor Rivera was reaching toward his waistline when he pulled out his .40-caliber Glock and fired toward Rivera without aiming.

Pesqueira said he didn't learn one of his five bullets found its mark until 5 a.m. the next day. He said he repainted his car, dismantled and threw away the gun and tossed out his license plates because he was "scared."

When asked why he didn't call the police to explain his side of the story, Pesqueira said no one in his neighborhood near East 22nd Street and South Park Avenue ever calls the police.

Pesqueira told jurors his troubles with Rivera, 28, started a few days before the shooting.

Pesqueira said he was outside Club Envy waiting for his brother when Rivera and a friend of Rivera's backed into a car owned by one of his friends.

There was a verbal confrontation between the two groups, but when Rivera and his friends pulled their guns, Pesqueira said, he and his friend left.

Pesqueira recognized Rivera from the neighborhood he grew up in and knew that Rivera had served time in prison for shooting someone, Pesqueira told defense attorney Brick Storts.

Over the next few days, Pesqueira said he received phone calls telling him some men in a white car were looking for him and they were "strapped up," or carrying guns.

To protect himself, Pesqueira said he began carrying around the gun he'd purchased six months earlier from a cousin for $400.

On May 15, 2007, Pesqueira said, he pulled into the Diamond Shamrock at 22nd and Park to get gas.

After he pulled in, Pesqueira said, he spotted Rivera, they made eye contact, and Rivera reached for his waistline.

Pesqueira said he reached between the front seats of his Buick Regal for his gun and fired toward Rivera without stopping and without aiming.

"He was getting ready to shoot at me," Pesqueira said. "If I wouldn't have shot, he would've shot me."

When asked by prosecutor Michael Kelly who called to warn him about the men in the white car, Pesqueira said he didn't want to say. Then he said he didn't remember the man's last name or the name of the woman who called him.

He also couldn't remember where he threw away the various parts of the dismantled gun, although he said it was on the East Side.

Pesqueira said it was a complete coincidence his cousin was at the Diamond Shamrock at the same time as he and Rivera. Witnesses reported seeing Pesqueira's cousin follow him out of the lot after the shooting.

Pesqueira insisted he and Rivera made eye contact in the seconds before the shooting. Kelly told jurors during opening statements last week that Rivera was receiving a cell phone call at the exact moment he was shot and the bullet's path indicates he was likely looking down at the phone when he was shot.

Pima County Superior Court Judge Frank Dawley is presiding over the trial.