The prosecution called two key eyewitnesses to the stand in day three of the trial for four men charged with murder in a 2015 drive-by shooting.

Both witnesses appeared in court in prison jumpsuits. They have been detained on a material witness bond out of fear they would not show up. 

The first was a man who says he heard shots from what he believed to be a vehicle, but he never saw the car until it crashed. 

The other was a teenage girl who was leaving the party and was already in a car when she said she heard the shots. 

On the stand, the girl testified that she saw three men get out of the crashed SUV not far from the scene. The witness identified defendant Keyshawn McLaurin and said she saw him exiting the vehicle along with someone that may have been Demond Mitchell. When asked if she saw Mitchell’s face, she said just the side of it and said it could have been him but wasn’t sure.

On cross examination, Demond Mitchell’s attorney, John Carlson, asked if her fear of the gunfire and the panic from the crash could have affected her judgment of who she actually saw. She replied yes.

Carlson defended Mitchell, calling it a case of mistaken identity. He hinted at the fact that the witness may have been lying and trying to protect one of her friends, who has not been charged in the case but whose DNA was found inside the crashed SUV.

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