Defendant didn’t think gun was loaded

Teen told police in 2013 he meant to scare paramedic

OAKLAND — The testimony phase of the trial in the slaying of Quinn Boyer wrapped up Wednesday with a video of defendant Christian Burton telling police that he shot the Santa Clara County paramedic with a gun he didn’t think was loaded.

Speaking in 2013 about two weeks after the 34year-old Dublin newlywed’s death, Burton, then 16, told police that he only meant to scare Boyer to steal his car, which was his friends’ idea.

“They were all laughing about it after, and I didn’t think it was funny,” Burton told detectives.

Burton, now 18, is charged with shooting Boyer, and David McNeal, 17, is charged as an accomplice.

They are being prosecuted as adults on charges of murder in the course of an attempted carjacking.

McNeal is also charged with an East Oakland carjacking he allegedly committed a few hours after Boyer was shot in the Oakland hills on April 2, 2013, and with assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly shooting a middle-school boy during a robbery the next day. The boy survived.

Prosecutor Glenn Kim says six boys — ages 13 to 16 — were looking to carjack another vehicle when they came across Boyer sitting inside his car on Keller Avenue, sending a text message. Kim said Nazhee Flowers and Burton got out of the stolen Dodge Intrepid the group was traveling in and Burton fired the gun, striking Boyer in the head.

Boyer drove a short distance and struck an embankment. He died two days later.

When attorneys give closing arguments on Sept. 2, McNeal’s attorney plans to argue that McNeal was not compliant in the attempted carjacking of Boyer and had nothing to do with the paramedic’s shooting.

Burton’s attorney, Ernie Castillo, will argue that Boyer was fatally shot by Flowers, who was also charged as an adult and took a plea deal in the case. He is serving 15 years in prison for carjacking.

Flowers’ clothing that day matches the description of the gunman given by a woman who witnessed the shooting, but all of the teens involved, including Burton himself, ultimately said that Burton pulled the trigger.

When the trial opened earlier this month, Castillo told jurors that Burton was pressured by police into giving a false confession.

Castillo on Tuesday called the sole defense witness, a University of Nevada, Reno, professor certified as an expert on police interrogations and false confessions.

Deborah Davis explained the factors that lead people, and teens in particular, into giving false confessions, but she was legally prohibited from talking specifically about Burton’s confession to police.

Rodkei Royal, 17, Maurice Senegal, 15, and Damani Watts, 16, each pleaded to first-degree murder in juvenile court and are serving out their sentences with the state Division of Juvenile Justice.

Closing arguments will resume Sept. 2 in Judge C. Don Clay’s Oakland courtroom.