Things appeared to be quiet on the afternoon of Jan. 31, 2016, when the gunshots rang out in the 31st Precinct building in Queens, beginning a long and gruesome ordeal for Rekia Boyd, the 21-year-old mother of three, and ending the lives of her two friends, Marcell Dockery and Kesean Anderson.
Now a three-week long trial is underway, with the jurors hearing the horrific testimony of the three men who allegedly participated in the crime and, on Thursday, seeing the aftermath of the shooting as it was captured on film.
On Thursday, jurors saw the video of Tyshawn Lee’s short funeral procession through the streets of Flatbush, Brooklyn. In the video, Lee’s mother, Toledoan Keisha Lewis, was seen standing on a corner along Eastern Parkway as dozens of men and women join her in singing, praying and honoring her son, whose life had been cut short hours earlier when Johnson, a friend of the defendants, allegedly robbed him of his possessions and then shot him dead.
After the funeral procession, the video showed Lee’s body wrapped in an American flag being placed in a hearse as thousands more lined Eastern Parkway and stepped toward the procession on foot.
Jurors on Thursday also watched an edited version of the video that was first played at their first day of testimony on Monday. The defense had requested to play a five-minute scene that they claimed was inadvertently left out of the tape at their first court appearance, while prosecutors asked to show the whole five-minute sequence. As in the original footage, all three groups walked together. They did not appear to be in a threatening way.
After several jurors watched portions of the video, including the funeral procession and Lee’s procession, they voted to hear the entire 5-minute video. That part of the video showed both groups of men and women walking in a peaceful way away from the police officers. While Lee’s group was composed mostly of his friends, they were still mostly standing with their hands in the air, which some jurors said made them feel as if they were no different than Lee’s procession.
Jurors also saw Anderson, Dockery and Lee’s cousin deliver their testimony on Thursday.
The trial is expected to last all week.