Jurors in officer’s trial watch shooting

Attorney says defendant was trying to save lives

CHICAGO — The last moments of Laquan Mcdonald’s life played over and over again for the jury. An officer pulls up, gets out of a squad car and opens fire as the black teenager walks away from police, a small knife in one hand. Mcdonald crumples to the ground. More bullets are fired into his body — a total of 16.

The video of the Oct. 20, 2014, shooting is so central to the murder trial of white Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke that jurors watched it at least five times during the first day of testimony Monday — the first time just 15 minutes into opening statements.

Its release more than a year after the shooting sparked large protests, the ouster of the city’s police superintendent and demands for police reform.

Most jurors had said during jury selection that they had already seen the footage, which appears to contradict the initial claims of Van Dyke and other officers that Mcdonald had lunged at them with a knife.

Now the jury watched it repeatedly, with prosecutors at one point stopping it to highlight certain points: the moment before Van Dyke opens fire; the first bullet striking Mcdonald; the 17-year-old lying on the ground.

In some of the most compelling testimony of the day, Officer Dora Fontaine said puffs of smoke seen on video coming from the teen’s prone body were, in fact, smoke that she saw when bullets struck him.

While prosecutors stressed that no other officers who encountered McDonald opened fire, defense attorney Daniel Herbert argued that Van Dyke “is not a murderer. … He is a scared police officer who was fearful for his life and the life of others and acted as he was trained to do.”

In his opening statement, special prosecutor Joseph Mcmahon recounted each of the 16 shots that Van Dyke fired.

“Not a single shot was necessary or justified,” he said at another point in his opening statement.

But Herbert told the jury that the number of shots fired was irrelevant: “They didn’t charge him with shooting too many times. They charged him with first-degree murder.”

Van Dyke has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, aggravated battery and official misconduct.

Antonio Perez The Associated Press Jason Van Dyke’s lawyer, Daniel Herbert, motions with the blade Laquan Mcdonald carried the night he was killed during opening statements in Van Dyke’s first-degree murder trial on Monday in Chicago.