Opinion ID: 2066238
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Eyewitnesses to the Murders

Text: Nikita Sweeney testified that she was the one who made the U-turn that caught Brisbon's eye. She had dropped off and was waiting for her friend, murder victim Ivory Harrison, who was looking for her lost purse at Eastern Senior High School at around 11 p.m. on May 17. According to Ms. Sweeney, there was a crowd of about fifteen to twenty people gathered in front of the school, drinking and talking. As she started the U-turn, she saw a boy get out of a black pickup truck and fire, first into the air, and then into the crowd of people outside the high school. When he then point[ed] his gun towards her, she hid under her dashboard. As she opened her eyes, Ivory Harrison had gotten back in the car, but both young women decided to crawl out of the car's passenger side door to escape the shots that were still being fired at their car. Almost as soon as they started, however, both were shot. They tried to run to safety; Ms. Harrison was too injured to run, but Ms. Sweeney, who had been shot in the left leg, made it to a group home across the street, from where she was taken to D.C. General and hospitalized for a month. Ms. Sweeney could not say how many shots were fired, but she thought they came from an automatic gun that looked like a rifle, and that the shots had been fired in a steady stream without any break. She was not able to pick her assailant out of a photo array, [2] but she was certain that he was a black male dressed in all black, including a black baseball cap, and that he had gotten out from the passenger side of the black pickup truck. She also said that there was only one person shooting and that the shooter had only one gun. Seventeen-year-old Jameice Phillips testified that she was around Eastern High that night talking in a group of about thirty people, when a black pickup truck pulled up. She saw the passenger come out of the truck, [3] and fire one big loud gunshot, a loud boom and then a lot of other gunshots. Her friend Peabo, Charles Jackson, was one of the persons shot dead. According to Ms. Phillips, there was only one shooter, who was wearing a bandanna or scarf across the forehead; she did not see the driver. She identified Brisbon, whom she knew from her neighborhood for about five years as Ronnie T, as the shooter. Metro Transit Police Officer Eric Croom was patrolling the area, which is near the Stadium-Armory Metro station, when he heard gunshots. At what he estimated to be 11:25 p.m. he saw through his rear view mirror a car stopped horizontally in the middle of the street about a block and a half away, then saw the flash of gunshots coming from the driver's side. He immediately radioed the Metropolitan Police and began assisting the victims. He saw Ms. Harrison lying on the ground by Ms. Sweeney's car, and found Mr. Jackson, bleeding from the head, without a pulse. He could not describe the person who fired the shots, but thought there was only one shooter, because he saw a series of flashes from what appeared to be a single gun muzzle.