BRIGHTON — Two days before prosecutors say a man shot and killed an Aurora police detective, he fired his gun at a nurse as she was sitting in her car. Wednesday, an Adams County jury listened as prosecutors described that first attack.
Brian Washington is on trial for the murder of Det. Mike Thomas in September 2006 as Thomas sat in his personal car at Peoria Street and Montview Boulevard.
Washington’s attorneys claim he was criminally insane at the time of the shooting.
Washington has already been convicted in the attempted murder of Vernice Griffin. She was sitting in her car in Denver when Washington took out a gun, showed it to her and shot at her as she crouched down in her car.
Griffin has passed away from cancer, but Wednesday the jury was able to hear the story in her own words. She testified during a deposition before her death and the prosecution played that tape for the jury.
She said on the tape she was sitting at 33rd and Dayton when a man she later found out was Washington walked up to her car and started dancing and singing. He then flashed the gun and she ducked.
“Well I just laid there and I felt, well, shot. He shot the gun… I felt the glass hit my arm and it burned. And I thought, ‘I could just lay here.’ I mean, I was in shock,” Griffin testified.
She survived the attack.
Witnesses during this trial have said that after shooting Thomas, Washington screamed seemingly nonsensical things, including telling an officer that he was with the federal government and that he was being followed.
The murder weapon was also shown to the jury on Wednesday afternoon. A forensics expert told the jury it was her belief, based on DNA evidence, that Washington fired the gun.
A coroner later testified it was a single shot that killed Thomas.
The trial continues today.
