Lyndon ? An 11-year-old Kansas boy says he was cleaning coins with his mother at his great-grandmother’s house when his father came into the home and shot his mother with a deer rifle.

The boy testified Tuesday in a preliminary hearing for 47-year-old James Kraig Kahler. The father is charged in Osage County with four counts of capital murder in the November 2009 killings of his wife, her grandmother and the couple’s two daughters.

Kahler was working at the time as a city official in Columbia, Mo.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports the boy testified over a remote television hookup to Osage County District Court.

Kahler had offered to waive the hearing because he didn’t want his son exposed to the stress and emotional trauma of testifying.

The hearing was expected to last at least through Tuesday.