Two witnesses gave dramatic accounts Wednesday of how a high school football star was gunned down earlier this year near his Los Angeles home, opening a tense courtroom hearing packed with relatives of the victim and the alleged gunman.
Jamiel Shaw II, 17, was talking to his girlfriend on a cellphone when she overheard a voice ask him "Where are you from?" the teenage girl testified. There was no response and then the line went dead, she said.
Another witness testified that she watched a lone, hooded gunman approach Shaw on the street near his Arlington Heights home and fire a single shot. When Shaw fell, the gunman walked around him and delivered a final close-range shot to his head, she said.
"I saw the sparks from the gun," said Tiffiney Johnson, a neighbor of Shaw who at one point broke down and cried on the witness stand. "I froze and was in total shock."
As Johnson spoke at the preliminary hearing in Los Angeles County Superior Court, a large photo of a smiling Shaw beamed down from a projector screen. His mother and father, wearing white T-shirts emblazoned with photos of their son, sat in the courtroom's front row, occasionally dabbing at their eyes.
"It's hard," said his mother, Army Sgt. Anita Shaw, who was stationed in Iraq when she heard news of her son's death. "It's like we're living it again."
The hearing in downtown Los Angeles marks the first opportunity for prosecutors to present evidence publicly in their murder case against Pedro Espinoza, a 19-year-old Latino gang member who authorities say was in the country illegally when he allegedly gunned down Shaw, who was black.
The March 2 slaying rekindled a fierce debate over the role that race has played in recent violence against blacks and galvanized opposition to a controversial policy that limits when Los Angeles police officers can inquire about someone's citizenship status.
At the end of testimony, which is expected to last at least one more day, Judge Bob S. Bowers Jr. will rule whether prosecutors have shown there is enough evidence to try Espinoza for murder.
Espinoza's defense attorney attempted several times during the morning hearing to ask Shaw's 14-year-old girlfriend whether he belonged to a gang. But after objections from prosecutors, the judge would not allow the girl to answer.
One of the prosecution's key witnesses suggested that the killing was gang-motivated.
