Pictures may speak louder than words, but it was the words on a videotape that led a judge to bind the former owner of the Eldridge Hotel over for trial on charges that he threatened and battered a Douglas County Sheriff’s officer.

“I’m going to shoot your _ _ _,” Rob Phillips could be heard saying repeatedly on a videotape played Tuesday afternoon in Douglas County District Court. “Let me get my gun.”

Assistant Dist. Atty. David Melton played the videotape taken from Cpl. Clark Rials’ patrol car, during Phillips’ preliminary hearing.

Though Phillips can’t be seen on the tape, he can be heard over the officer’s microphone shouting obscenities.

“He was pretty ticked off,” Rials said. “He was yelling at the top of his lungs.”

Phillips is charged with making a criminal threat and misdemeanor battery on a law enforcement officer, stemming from an incident Jan. 23 at his Victorian Veranda Country Inn, a bed and breakfast at 1431 North 1900 Road.

Phillips’ wife had called 911 around 11:30 that night, worried that her husband was suicidal.

Cpl. Rials was dispatched to check his welfare.

“Calm down, calm down, I kept telling him. I was only there to help him,” Rials testified.

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Rials told the judge that Phillips was extremely agitated from the start and came after the officer, who can be heard on the tape telling other deputies responding for backup to hurry.

It wasn’t until the other officers arrived that Rials was able to get handcuffs on Phillips.

“I just laid on top of him until backup units arrived,” Rials said.

Phillips did not speak during the preliminary hearing. But Phillips had months earlier told reporters his version of what happened that night.

Just days after his arrest, he told the Lawrence Journal-World and 6News that he suffered from macular degeneration, an eye disorder, and couldn’t see the officer. He thought he was being robbed.

And his lawyer, Overland Park attorney Tom Bath, pointed out during his cross-examination of Rials that the officer never knocked or rang a doorbell, didn’t identify himself as a sheriff’s officer and didn’t comply with Phillips’ repeated requests to leave.

“He’s telling you repeatedly to get off his property,” Bath asked, “and you don’t leave?”

Judge Jack Murphy found there was probable cause to believe that Phillips threatened the officer.

A jury trial is scheduled for Sept. 21.