A chunk of the way into government's exhibit 11, a video timeline pieced together by Lincoln police, jurors see the headlights of a car driving by an apartment complex.
It is 3:24 a.m. July 31, 2018.
Two minutes later, a security camera outside the house at 1950 Fairfield St. picks it up driving by before circling back to the complex.
Eleven minutes later, at 3:38 a.m., three people emerge from the top left corner of the camera view headed across the yard.
Jurors at Tawhyne Patterson and Damon Williams' murder trial Thursday already knew Jessica Brandon soon would be shot and dying at the bottom of the stairs. Watching felt ominous.Ìý
First, the muffled sound of a mule kickÌýto the wooden doorÌýbreaksÌýthe silence. Then the three would-be robbers quickly crawl in through a gaping hole.
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About 6 seconds later come eight popping sounds — the first gunshots — picked up in the audio of a neighbor's motion-sensor home security camera tripped when their cat moves.
The view the jury sees still outside the front door looks like a crisp black-and-white video, but it's really infrared night-vision taken from a high-quality, eight-camera security setup, Lincoln Police video technician Jared Minary told them. It makes the grass look white, like a thin layer of snow, despite it being summer. Bugs look like snowflakes blowing by.Ìý
Two minutes and 2 seconds pass before the sound of more shots. This time, three shots.
The jurors don't see what's happening inside. They just hear the muffled pops, caught on the cat video.Ìý
Then, the three intruders spill out the front door, one nearly falling. One drops a duffel bag as he runs, comes back to grab it, then turns and fires two shots back toward the front door, the muzzle bursts flashing white on the video.
Immediately after the two gunshots, the gut-wrenching audio of the 911 call starts off first with 12-year-old Ava, then 16-year-old Kyana, trying to save their mother, Brandon. That audio was spliced for jurors between video of Michael Robertson moving two 1-pound bags of marijuana to a cooler and into the shed out back before police get there.
"I don't know. I was in my room, and I just heard gunshots," Ava says.
She seems calm until she sees her mom facedown on the stairs.Ìý
"Oh my God. Mom, are you OK? Mom? Mom?" she yells. "Oh my God. I think she's dead. ... I can't breathe."
She tries to find a pulse before her older sister takes the phone, and the 911 operator gets her to start CPR compressions as she sobs.Ìý
Police officers start to arrive, one cautiously approaching the front door, as three show up on the camera in the backyard.
Minary would take images of three suspects from the original surveillance videos that night and a night before, when four men got through the back fence, but who ran off after a light came on. Those photos were shown to jurors Thursday.
In opening statements a day earlier, Patterson's and Williams' attorneys said the video images weren't clear enough to ID their clients as two of the men who went into the house with guns that night.Ìý
Two of the men's faces were covered.Ìý
They say it wasn't them.
On Thursday afternoon, Melvin Andrews, Dante Williams' grandfather who helped raised him and his brother, Damon Williams, for three or four years, said he was watching the news the night after it happened and saw the pictures police released of the suspects.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Woods asked if he recognized anyone.
"My grandsons, Damon and Dante," he said.Ìý