After a hearing at Provo’s 4th District Court on Wednesday, Tamara Ragsdale said she believed her brother is innocent and that he was “not conscious when this tragic act was committed.”

David Ragsdale is charged with aggravated murder, a capital offense. According to police, Ragsdale shot his wife, Kristy, in the parking lot of an LDS church in Lehi on Jan. 6.

At the time of his wife’s murder, David Ragsdale, 35, was taking seven medications, including Paxil, Doxepin, Ritalin, Provigil and two forms of testosterone, his sister said. Tamara Ragsdale said the plethora of negative side effects he suffered from the drugs were not properly monitored by the nurse practitioner who prescribed them, and the interactions chemically altered his brain.

“David put his faith and trust in a nurse practitioner, the [Food and Drug Administration] and the pharmaceutical companies that these drugs were safe,” she said. “David is now living in his own hell as he is coming off of these meds. He is waking up to the horror of this reality.”

At Wednesday’s hearing, David Ragsdale’s attorney, Gregory Skordas, requested a continuance so his client could undergo a psychological evaluation. Skordas said the evaluation would be completed by the end of the month. Judge Claudia Laycock scheduled the next hearing in the case for April 9.

“We want to make sure we have all the evidence together to make the correct decisions,” Tamara Ragsdale said. “There’s a couple different tests we’re going to have done.”

Deputy Utah County Attorney Craig Johnson said the Ragsdales will use a private psychologist, not a court-appointed one.

“This is news to us. This isn’t something that we had appointed or anything in any way,” Johnson said.

Tamara Ragsdale read a statement written by her brother in which he apologized for Kristy’s death.

“Words cannot describe how incredibly sorry I am for the death of my wife, Kristy. I want the Palizzi family and everyone to know that I would do anything to bring her back, even if it meant giving up my own life,” Tamara Ragsdale said as she read her brother’s statement. “It is time for the public to educate themselves of the adverse reactions of these mind-altering drugs and how they act on the brain.”

Some of the listed side effects of the medications Ragsdale was taking include manic reaction, suicide, homicidal tendencies, hallucinations, delusions, psychosis, amnesia, panic and seizures, Tamara Ragsdale said. She said her brother was suffering blackouts, severe headaches and other side effects from the drugs.

Tamara Ragsdale said her brother had gone to the nurse practitioner who prescribed the drugs at the urging of his wife. He had been taking some of the medications for about a year, she said, while others were prescribed just two months before the shooting.

While spending Christmas with David and Kristy, Tamara Ragsdale said she noticed marked changes in her brother.

“I’m a nurse, so I knew something was wrong with his behavior and his meds,” she said. “These medications were altering his brain.”

She criticized what she described as a tendency of some people to rely on prescriptions to fix their problems. She also said the family is considering legal action against the nurse practitioner who prescribed the medications.

“I think that when people aren’t happy they tend to go to the doctor, or ask their spouse to go, and think that there’s going to be a magic pill that’s going to fix something,” she said. “David happened to be a victim of this and tragically … what happened was he suffered from the adverse reactions.”

Carrie Peters, Kristy Ragsdale’s cousin, made a brief statement to the media after the hearing, but declined to comment on the progress of the case.

“We just want everybody to know that we just love Kristy so much and we miss her a great deal, and we are hoping that through justice and forgiveness we might be able to find safety and closure,” Peters said.

• Jeremy Duda can be reached at 344-2561 or jduda@heraldextra.com.