A dispute between West Goshen neighbors ended with one dead. Now, the other heads to trial.

Hours before he was shot dead in his driveway nearly two years ago, George Brooks Jennings took a shaky cell phone video of the alleged gunman.

The image he captured was not one of an ominous figure lurking in the shadows, but of a next-door neighbor, Clayton P. Carter III, a tall, middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair, playing horseshoes on a warm August night in 2017.

Jennings, a 51-year-old husband and father, told police he started filming because he wanted to document Carter cursing at him — the latest incident in a bitter, long-running feud between the men.

“Way to be neighborly,” Jennings said from behind the camera. “I’ve been nothing but neighborly to you, and you’ve been [profanity].”

Carter shouted back expletives.

Later, about 1 a.m. Aug. 8, the feud would end for good, prosecutors say, with two shots from a handgun, an uncommon sound on Box Elder Drive in West Goshen.

Now, Carter is preparing to try to convince a jury that he fired those shots in self-defense. Next week he is set to go on trial on charges of first-degree murder, third-degree murder, and voluntary manslaughter.

The footage from his confrontation with Jennings was played in court Friday during a final pretrial hearing in West Chester. County Court Judge Ann Marie Wheatcraft ruled on several motions and said she would consider others.

Wearing a suit jacket and tie, Carter, 53, appeared engaged, taking notes, talking with his attorney, and at times shaking his head.

Carter gunned down Jennings, prosecutors say, during an argument over a spotlight that Carter said Jennings was shining at him.

Prosecutors say the killing was premeditated, noting that Carter, who owned six guns — including three loaded shotguns that he passed by on his way out the door — instead chose a weapon he could conceal.

“He did not want the victim, Brooks Jennings, to know he was carrying a gun on his person,” Assistant District Attorney Vincent Cocco said. “He knows when he did brandish those [larger] firearms before, Mr. Jennings backed down. He didn’t want Mr. Jennings to back down this time.”

Carter’s lawyer, Joseph P. Green Jr., said his client acted in self-defense after Jennings — who at the time had a blood-alcohol content of 0.198, more than twice the legal limit for driving — came at Carter with a knife after years of torment.

It was Jennings’ mission to make Carter feel uncomfortable, Green said, and Jennings had a history of acting aggressively toward Carter, especially when Jennings had been drinking.

Hours before the killing, around 8 p.m., West Goshen police were called to resolve the men’s dispute, part of which was captured on the cell phone video.

Then about 1 a.m., Carter told police, he’d returned home from the Giant supermarket on Boot Road and saw Jennings outside. Carter went inside, dropped his groceries in the kitchen, and retrieved a .380-caliber Ruger semiautomatic pistol from atop a jelly cabinet.

Outside, tensions escalated quickly on Box Elder, a winding street of Colonial homes.

Carter moved his car, parking it on the grass with the high beams pointed toward Jennings, according to court documents. When he got out of the car, the argument continued.

Carter shot Jennings once, authorities say, causing him to collapse on his driveway. As Jennings’ wife, Jill, watched from an inside window, Carter walked up to Jennings, stood over him, and shot him again in the head, investigators say.

Carter left the gun on top of a nearby car, authorities said, and waited for officers to arrive.

Court records show Carter had a history of violence that spanned nearly two decades.

In 1998, he drove his blue Chevrolet pickup truck through the front of his in-laws’ home on Box Elder, the same home he would move into years later to help his wife care for them, the same home where he would clash with Jennings.

“I know what I did, arrest me," he told police when they arrived at the scene in 1998, according to court documents. Carter added: “I came to get my daughter," then a newborn, who was temporarily living at the home with her mother, according to Terrence J. Marlowe, Carter’s former lawyer.

In that case, Carter was arraigned on felony counts of aggravated assault, criminal trespassing, and criminal mischief, charges that were ultimately reduced to a summary offense.

Prosecutors have indicated they plan to introduce earlier incidents in which Carter acted aggressively toward Jennings, but Carter’s past disputes with other neighbors will not be admissible.

Wheatcraft is still weighing whether to allow a jury to see photos of Carter’s other guns and to allow experts to testify about how Jennings’ blood-alcohol content could have affected his actions.

A jury is set to be impaneled on Thursday, and the trial could begin as early as Friday.

Since his arrest, Carter has been held at the Chester County Correctional Facility without bail.