Lawyer’s widow testifies of shooting terror
The widow of a man fatally shot by a bicyclist after a traffic encounter on Brady Street told jurors Friday that she feared the defendant was going to shoot her next.
“All I saw was this man’s eyes and the gun. I knew he was going to shoot my husband, I could just feel it,” Evangelina Cleereman said.
“He pulled the trigger, into my husband’s head, and he never took his eyes off me. I felt he was contemplating shooting me next.”
Cleereman’s husband of 23 years, Jason Cleereman, 54, had confronted Theodore Edgecomb, 32, on the Holton Street Bridge just moments after Edgecomb had punched him through an open car window while the couple was stopped at a traffic light.
Edgecomb, charged with first-degree intentional homicide, has raised selfdefense, which had drawn national attention to the case via CourtTV livestream coverage. If convicted, he faces a mandatory life sentence. Friday was the third day of trial, which is expected to conclude early next week.
Edgecomb’s attorneys have said the punch was in retaliation for Jason Cleereman calling him a racial slur after the couple’s car struck him a few blocks east on Brady Street.
Evangelina testified Friday she and Jason had been at Scaffidi’s Hideout on Humboldt Avenue. She said she had one glass of wine, and Jason had three beers and asked her to drive.
After she turned west on Brady Street, she said, Edgecomb suddenly darted out in front of her from the sidewalk near Thai-namite, where Edgecomb says he had just ordered dinner.
Evangelina said she swerved to avoid Edgecomb, and her husband yelled “What the heck!” On a squad car video from later in the evening, she’s seen telling someone on a phone call that Jason
“He pulled the trigger, into my husband’s head, and he never took his eyes off me. I felt he was contemplating shooting me next.”
Evangelina Cleereman
had called to Edgecomb using profanity.
She testified about how minutes later, while stopped at the light at Holton Street, Edgecomb rode up and punched her husband, that his glasses flew off, and he said the punch had drawn blood.
She said as the light turned green, she was still stunned and trying to reach for the eyeglasses that had landed by her door.
“Jason said, ‘Turn the corner, I want to talk to him.’ ”
‘He’s got a gun’
She said she stopped, her husband exited and began walking toward Edgecomb, then she pulled up closer. She said she yelled, “He’s got a gun” right before the shot but didn’t think her husband heard her.
After the shot, Jason fell and Edgecomb left down the stairs from the bridge. She got out of the car and ran up to her husband. “I put my hand on his back, and I’m screaming Jason, Jason, Jason, are you alive, or you OK?
“And he didn’t move. Then I realized he was dead.”
She said she doesn’t remember returning to her car but does recall being too shook up to call 911, and asking some bystanders to do so.
While they did, she said, she called her daughter, then a close friend, telling them Jason had been killed and asking them to come to the scene. They didn’t believe her at first, she said.
Then she went back to her husband’s body a second time.
“I wanted to pick him up, hug him, but knew I couldn’t, that I couldn’t touch or move him. I wanted something of his I could hold on to. So I grabbed his wallet,” from his back pants pocket, she testified, and held it in her hands until she turned it over to police later in the evening.
In its opening statement, the defense had raised questions about her reactions and demeanor right after the shooting. Prosecutors played a video from a squad car where she was later sitting.
She is seen later in the footage crying alone in the car. The widow is also heard saying, “No one’s going to love me like you, my love.”
Use of racial slur denied
She denied Jason used the N-word toward Edgecomb. She called her husband, an immigration lawyer, a peaceful man who cared about conflict resolution.
The prosecutor asked her about a large folding knife found in her husband’s pocket. She said he carried it regularly, to open packages at his office and to sometimes cut fresh flowers for her from plants in their yard.
On cross examination, attorney B’Ivory LaMarr asked if her husband might have consumed more than three beers at Scaffidi’s. She said it might have have been four.
He also questioned why she didn’t immediately call for help after Edgecomb punched her husband. “So you made the conscious decision not to call 911 and take matters into your own hands?” LaMarr asked.
Cleereman refuted the implication. “I’m shocked, I’m reaching for my husband’s glasses and driving. I trusted my husband. He was calm, so I turned” to follow Edgecomb, as Jason Cleereman asked.