Opinion ID: 2066238
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Dana Route's Testimony

Text: Dana Route testified that at the time of the crime, she was Ronnie T Brisbon's ex-girlfriend; they remained friends and worked together at C & T Auto Shop in Fort Washington, Maryland. On the evening of Tuesday, May 16, 2000, she went with Brisbon in her Honda to meet Pretty B Wonson and two other men at the 4600 block of Hillside Road, S.E., where they bought a black Ford F-150 truck from Michael Cobb for $60. Wonson drove the truck away. The next day, around 9 p.m. on Wednesday, May 17, 2000, Brisbon and Ms. Route picked up Wonson in Ms. Route's car and drove to where Wonson had parked the truck behind an apartment building on Benning Road. Wonson then went into the woods near the truck and returned to the car. The three went to Brisbon's grandmother's house. While there, Ms. Route saw Brisbon cleaning two rifles with WD-40 while Wonson stood nearby. Appellants each grabbed a gun and Brisbon invited Ms. Route to accompany them. She refused to go, but gave appellants the keys to her car. She recalled that Brisbon was wearing a black ballcap, black T-shirt, and blue jeans. Brisbon and Wonson returned in under twenty-five minutes, guns still in hand. After they came into the house, Brisbon said to Wonson, I can't believe that your gun jammed. About fifteen minutes later, all three left the grandmother's house in Ms. Route's car, with one of the appellants concealing the guns in a black shirt. Wonson got out in an alley behind the grandmother's house. Brisbon drove the truck to Prince George's County while Ms. Route followed him in her car. Brisbon parked the truck in a residential neighborhood and set fire to it with a lit napkin. They then went to Brisbon's house in Ms. Route's car for the night. The following day, Thursday, May 18, 2000, Ms. Route was watching the news on TV while at work when she saw a report that two people were killed on East Capitol Street and that a burnt truck was suspected as being involved. Ms. Route put two and two together and confronted Brisbon. At first, Brisbon denied killing anyone, but then recounted a version of events that made it fairly obvious that he did. Specifically, Ms. Route testified, Brisbon told her that Pretty B [Wonson] was looking for somebody, and when he and Brisbon spotted the target, Pretty B had got out of the truck and fired [bullets] into a crowd. Brisbon told her that he saw a car trying to evade them by making a U-turn, so he shot at that car, and saw that the person in the car had slumped over the steering wheel. Ms. Route was impeached with her initial statements to the police denying any knowledge of the crime to the police. She said that her parents, who are retired police officers, convinced her to testify after explaining that she could be considered an accessory-after-the-fact or a perjurer if she failed to tell the truth to the grand jury or at trial.