Ernie’s bartender, patrons testify

Ernie’s Cafe was busy on Dec. 22, 2006, until one of its patrons, Todd “T-Rek” Thomas, was shot to death around midnight while smoking a cigarette at the front entrance.

Bartender Jodi Mangelinx testified Friday at the murder trial of Gerjuan “Cali” Tyus and Darius “P-Nut” Armadore in Norwich that she had just poured a shot when “a rock hit the window” and “the whole bar just jumped.”

“Somebody said to me, ‘That wasn’t a rock. That was a gunshot,’” Mangelinx said.

She went outside and saw a person lying in the doorway of the Hotel Royal, which is adjacent to Ernie’s on Bank Street in New London.

One of the bar’s customers, Kevin “Web” Thorne, was outside when the shooting occurred, she testified, because she saw him looking at his own reflection on the window while talking on the phone.

Mangelinx said she closed the bar soon after the shooting, though she doesn’t remember doing so.

During Mangelinx’s testimony, prosecutor David J. Smith put on the projector video and displayed still photographs taken by surveillance cameras within the bar and enhanced at the FBI’s forensics laboratory in Quantico, Va.

Mangelinx commented several times that the video was “blurry” and “horrible.”

Smith elicited testimony from other customers of the bar, which closed last month, including Desharra Holeman, who was seen talking to Thomas on the video recording.

Holeman testified she had ordered Thomas a drink earlier that night and that she and another woman had smoked a cigarette with him outside the front entrance.

When she heard the gunshots, she grabbed her purse and left, Holeman testified.

Holeman’s sister, Demetria Griffin, testified she, too, was drinking at Ernie’s that night but didn’t hear the gunshots.

She admitted that after the shooting, Thorne handed her some drugs to hold and she took them.

Griffin said she knows Tyus and pointed him out at the defense table. Their children are friends, she said, but Tyus never spoke to her about the incident.

Also testifying Friday was retired city police Lt. George Potts.

As a member of the city’s Vice and Intelligence Squad at the time, Potts testified that after hearing that a witness saw somebody drive from the scene in a gray car, he remembered seeing Tyus in a similar car several days before the shooting.

Knowing it was a rental car, Potts said he called the manager of Enterprise Rentals.

The police seized the car, which was returned on Dec. 28. Tyus’ girlfriend had rented the car, but included his name on the contract as a possible driver of the vehicle, according to testimony.

The police seized the four-door Chevy Malibu and searched it for evidence.

Retired detective Franklin S. Jarvis, the final witness of the day, testified briefly about the process of obtaining an “ex parte” court order to obtain Thomas’ phone records.

The prosecution will continue to present its case when the trial resumes Monday.

At some point, the victim’s brother, John “John John” Thomas, is expected to be called to the witness stand.

The Thomas brothers were feuding with Tyus over some gold chains that belonged to John Thomas, according to testimony.