Confronting a former lover

Another woman was forced to testify in a recent gun case against a former lover, despite pleading with detectives to excuse her from the witness stand.

She worried there’d be retribution. “The only way I am safe,” she said, “is if I don’t show up to court.”

But prosecutors subpoenaed her, and a detective showed up at her work to serve the notice. She asked about protective services but says officials told her she’d have to offer proof of a threat.

An officer came to her home to escort her to court last week.

At trial the prosecutor asked her about a gun that was found in her house, and the woman testified that it belonged to the man, a felon who was banned from having firearms. Detectives had searched her home and found a gun wrapped in shorts inside a book bag stashed in her closet. It had the man’s DNA on it.

The woman had to face him during cross examination because he’d fired his lawyer and was representing himself. She bit her bottom lip as he questioned her.

He accused her of being a gang member and alleged she left her door open for anyone off the street to walk in and leave a gun.

“You have all the characteristics to blame your problems on someone else,” he told her. “You put my name on something I have nothing to do with.”

After her testimony, she walked out of the courtroom and down the hall to her two young sons waiting in the witness services room.

She says her ex-lover was found not guilty on Friday. She still worries about running into him on the street.