BOSTON (WHDH) - Emotional opening statements were heard Monday in the trial of two men accused in the shooting death of a woman at the Caribbean Carnival Festival in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood in 2014.
“I looked around and I was like ‘where is Dawn,’ and then I looked behind me and she was just laying there on the ground,” Talia Hyatt told the court.
Hyatt struggled to hold back tears as she recounted the August morning when her friend, 26-year-old Dawnn Jaffier, was caught in some crossfire and killed. Surveillance video showed Jaffier and her friends walking past a store seconds before the shooting.
“I ran back and saw that she had been shot. So, I just sat there holding her head,” Hyatt said.
Keith Williams, 21, and Wesson Colas. 25, are both charged with first-degree murder. Police say the two pulled guns on each other on the crowded street and that Williams fired, missing Colas and hitting Jaffier in the head.
In opening statements, Colas’ attorney told jurors his client is innocent because he didn’t pull the trigger. Williams’ attorney said witnesses can’t put his client at the scene. Prosecutors argued that the two men, together, committed murder.
“They turned it into their own battlefield to sort out whatever testosterone-driven issues they had between them,” Mark Lee said.
Both Williams and Colas can be found guilty of murder, even if one of them fired the gun, according to prosecutors.
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