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CARTHAGE (MCT) — The people of Carthage were nearly united in their shock in March 2009 that eight people could be shot dead in a nursing home in their little town.

More than two years later, as the lone gunman accused in the killings is on trial for his life, it's almost as if the case isn't happening here at all.

Except for the news trucks and reporters' cars hogging the parking spots near the courthouse, there is scarce indication that one of the worst mass killings in the state's history is being adjudicated in a second-floor courtroom just a few blocks from where the shootings happened.

Until then, Carthage was known mostly as the one-time home of a successful buggy-building company and as the seat of Moore County, which is also home to the golf resort town of Pinehurst and its more working-class neighbor, Southern Pines.

Whether Robert Kenneth Stewart fired the shotgun blasts that killed seven residents and a nurse at Pinelake nursing home in Carthage that Sunday morning is not in dispute.

Prosecutors say the violence was a premeditated expression of Stewart's anger at his wife, a certified nursing assistant at Pinelake who was on duty that morning. Stewart's attorneys are trying to show the jury that Stewart was unaware of what he was doing March 29 because he had overdosed on sleeping pills and other prescription drugs.

That legal argument is not a topic of lengthy debate among the breakfast crowd at the local Hardee's or in the coffee shop near the courthouse or among the customers of nearby stores.

"I'm one of the few observers," said Dennis Kirby, who has come every day since the trial started. Kirby wasn't even living in the area when the shootings occurred, and unlike many of the 2,300 people of Carthage, he didn't know anyone involved in the case before the proceedings began.

But he's retired, has time on his hands and takes an interest in the judicial system. He thought this would be the hottest ticket in town for as long as it lasted.

As it turns out, there is plenty of space in the windowless courtroom. About two dozen family members of shooting victims, many from out of town, occupy one side of the room. A dozen or so reporters attend regularly, and a small group of observers came Tuesday when Stewart's former wife, Wanda Neal, was called to the stand by the prosecution and talked about her tumultuous relationship with Stewart.

Neal was not injured in the attack. Stewart did not find her before a police officer knocked him down with a shot to the shoulder and disarmed and handcuffed him.

Not everyone wants to know the details of Neal's two failed marriages to Stewart or hear how he shot up her car in the parking lot of the nursing home, fired at a visitor in his car and then entered the facility with a shotgun and a sidearm. They don't necessarily want to know, as testimony from a medical examiner indicated Wednesday, how many times nurse Jerry Avant was shot, at what range, or how much pain he experienced before he died.

"Who wants to hear all that again?" said Tammy Jones, who was making iced lattes Wednesday at Moore Coffee. "Everybody just wants it over and done."

Carthage Mayor Tom Stewart — no relation to the defendant — reads about the case in the papers and listens to TV news. But he has not attended the trial and has no plans to before jury deliberations are expected to begin next week.

The jury, by the way, isn't from Carthage; the judge moved jury selection to Stanly County because of extensive publicity, and jurors are bused in each morning from Albemarle.

Another trial may follow; families of four of the victims filed a civil case in March against the operators of the nursing home and Wanda Neal, saying they knew of the danger Stewart posed and could have done more to prevent the shootings.

"Most people in the town were very, very upset at the time all this happened," the mayor said.

"Everybody, I think, still has a very sad spot in their hearts for the people who were affected by this, whose family members were really gruesomely murdered. But they have made up their minds to move on to other things."