BALTIMORE (AP) \u2014 Officer William Porter was poised and calm as he testified in his own defense Wednesday, telling jurors that he didn\u2019t call an ambulance for Freddie Gray because Gray was alert, appeared uninjured and didn\u2019t complain of any pain or wounds in the back of a police van.<\/p>\n
Instead, Gray only said \u201cyes\u201d when Porter offered to get him medical aid, the officer testified. Porter said he suggested to the van driver, Officer Caesar Goodson, that Goodson take Gray to the hospital because he knew a prisoner claiming injury would be turned away from jail.<\/p>\n
But \u201cI can\u2019t tell Officer Goodson what to do,\u201d Porter said when asked why he didn\u2019t do more to ensure that Gray went to the hospital immediately.<\/p>\n
Porter, who was driving a patrol car, responded to calls for assistance at some of the van stops. Porter said that during the fourth stop, he went inside the back of the van and helped Gray, who was handcuffed and shackled, from the floor onto the bench. Porter said Gray wasn\u2019t limp, and was able to support himself with his legs.<\/p>\n
The fourth stop is crucial in Porter\u2019s case because prosecutors say Gray was already injured by the time he arrived there, and that Porter\u2019s failure to call a medic contributed to Gray\u2019s death. Defense attorneys say Gray was injured later in the ride.<\/p>\n
\u201cFreddie Gray wasn\u2019t injured at stop four or five, it\u2019s that simple,\u201d Porter said. \u201cHad he been injured, I would have called a medic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutors also say that by not buckling Gray into a seat belt during that stop, Porter was criminally negligent. The department requires detainees to be buckled up and the policy was updated just days before Gray\u2019s arrest, leaving no ambiguity about whether a prisoner should be belted in.<\/p>\n
Porter told the jury that the wagon is \u201cpretty tight\u201d and said that of his 200 arrests involving the transport van, he has never belted in a prisoner.<\/p>\n
Porter added that it would have been Goodson\u2019s responsibility to buckle Gray into a seatbelt and he didn\u2019t know if Goodson did so at the fourth stop because he left the scene before as the driver was closing the van doors.<\/p>\n
Goodson faces the most serious charge stemming from Gray\u2019s death: second-degree \u201cdepraved-heart\u201d murder. His trial is next month.<\/p>\n
As Porter spoke from the witness stand, facing the jury box, the jurors listened intently, some leaning forward and scribbling notes.<\/p>\n
Porter, the first of six officers to go on trial, said he only realized Gray was hurt when the van reached the police station. Porter said Gray was unresponsive \u201cwith mucus around his nose and mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n
He called Gray\u2019s name \u2014 which elicited responses at previous stops \u2014 but this time Gray was silent. Porter told jurors the experience was \u201ca very traumatic thing for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Porter faces manslaughter, assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment charges. If convicted on all of the charges, the maximum penalty he faces is about 25 years.<\/p>\n
Porter said that during the fourth stop, Gray made eye contact with him and spoke \u201cin a regular tone of voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe never made a complaint of pain or an injury,\u201d Porter said. \u201cIn order to call for an ambo I need age, sex, location and complaint of injury. He wouldn\u2019t give me a complaint of injury.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gray was a 25-year-old black man who died a week after suffering a spinal injury at some point during a 45-minute ride in the back of the van. His death set off protests and a riot in the city, and became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement.<\/p>\n
Porter, who is also black, told jurors that when Gray was arrested, he overheard him screaming and mentioning something about needing an inhaler. When asked if Gray said he couldn\u2019t breathe at the van\u2019s fourth stop, Porter said, \u201cabsolutely not.\u201d<\/p>\n
A police investigator previously testified that Porter told her that Gray said he couldn\u2019t breathe during the van ride. But Porter testified Wednesday that the investigator was mistaken, and that he only heard Gray say that when he was arrested, not when he was in the van.<\/p>\n
Porter, who was the defense\u2019s second witness, testified for more than four hours before Officer Zachary Novak, who was present during Gray\u2019s arrest and when the wagon arrived at the police station. Novak was the one who ultimately called an ambulance.<\/p>\n
Novak told the jury that by April 12, the day Gray was hurt, he hadn\u2019t seen an updated seat belt policy that had been emailed to all department employees, nor had it been read aloud at roll call.<\/p>\n
Novak also told jurors that when it comes to seat belting prisoners, in his experience only 10 percent of all detainees are buckled in.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore often than not people are not seat belted in wagons,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
This story has corrected the day of the week to Wednesday, not Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BALTIMORE (AP) \u2014 Officer William Porter was poised and calm as he testified in his own defense Wednesday, telling jurors that he didn\u2019t call an ambulance for Freddie Gray because Gray was alert, appeared uninjured and didn\u2019t complain of any pain or wounds in the back of a police van. Instead, Gray only said \u201cyes\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-31367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31367"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=31367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}