HAYWARD, Wis. — A Minnesota man expressed little remorse for his victims as he took the stand Thursday and explained to a courtroom of family members why he shot and killed six deer hunters and injured two others.

"I did what I had to do to defend myself," murder defendant Chai Soua Vang told jurors when asked why he opened fire on eight people, only one of whom was armed. "I had to do what was necessary to stay alive."

Dressed in red slacks, a red tie and a striped shirt, the defendant testified that he chased down and shot his victims after hunter Terry Willers opened fire on him first in a dispute over Vang's trespassing on his property in the northwest woods of Wisconsin.

"I was afraid, I was confused, I was scared," said Vang, who testified that his family immigrated to the United States from Laos in 1980 to escape civil war. "In my mind, I thought if I don't shoot them, they shoot me."

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Willers and another surviving witness, Lauren Hesebeck, both have testified that Vang was unprovoked and opened fire first.

In a case with scant forensic or circumstantial evidence, jurors will have to decide whether they believe Vang felt his life was in imminent danger and took necessary actions to survive.

With chilling nonchalance, Vang told Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager that three of his victims deserved to die, as members of the audience listened in disbelief.

"Can you tell me if on that day Joseph Crotteau deserved to die?" Lautenschlager asked, holding up a poster of the six victims for him to look at.

"Yes," Vang said after a long pause. "Because he accused me of giving him [the] finger and he cut in front of me when I tried to get on, and called me names."

Vang said also singled out 20-year-old Joey Crotteau's father, Robert, as "the one that confronted me the first time," along with family friend Allan Laski.

Vang testified that Laski also had a gun, although the defense presented no evidence that Laski was armed when Vang shot him three times in the back.

Vang said Robert Crotteau cursed and "disrespected" him by calling him names such as "gook," "chink" and "f---ing Asian."

Some of the victims' friends and relatives, who filled six rows of seats, dabbed away tears as Vang, the third and final witness in the defense case, described how he methodically shot each of his victims in terms eerily like a hunting scene.

He said that he pursued Joey Crotteau nearly 400 feet through the woods, shooting him at least four times, stopping to reload and waiting for "a clear shot" that dropped the 20-year-old dead to the ground.

While describing the incident from the stand, Vang pantomimed aiming and firing a rifle.

The medical examiner who performed the autopsy testified earlier in the day that the fourth gunshot to the back of his neck killed him.

At the end of his testimony, Vang's children, siblings and elderly mother were permitted to linger with him as he said what could be his final farewells as a free man.

In an emotional scene, the women in the family sobbed along with the defendant as he bowed in prayer, acknowledging each of them as he held back his own tears.

Outside the courthouse, Vang's daughter, Chia, read a statement on the behalf of her grandmother.

"I too am baffled and shocked by the events of November 21, 2004," the young woman said, voice trembling, as 13 family and friends stood behind her. "All of this could have been avoided if we just learn to respect each other."