By Dylan T. Lovan, The Associated Press
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Louisville detective who saw the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old man by police said he saw the teen turn toward police before he was fired upon.
Detective Matthew Thomerson, the first responding officer to the scene of the Jan. 3 shooting, said his view of the teen, Michael Newby, was partially blocked by a car. Newby was shot three times in the back by McKenzie Mattingly, a former Louisville narcotics detective.
“I remember him facing us, and that’s when I remembered other rounds being fired,” Thomerson testified Monday. Thomerson did not fire his gun that night.
Thomerson served in an undercover unit with Mattingly, who faces up to life in prison if he is convicted of murder in Newby’s death. Mattingly was fired in April, about a month after he was indicted for murder and wanton endangerment.
Thomerson said he rushed to the scene after he heard Mattingly say he had been robbed by Newby and two other men. Mattingly, who was wearing a wire transmitter, was attempting an undercover drug buy before he got into a scuffle with Newby in a liquor store parking lot in western Louisville.
Thomerson and other officers were watching the drug buy near the scene.
Newby was the seventh black man killed by Louisville police since 1998, and the media have heaped attention on the trial, which began its second week on Monday.
Mattingly’s attorneys have said that Newby made a gesture that signaled to Mattingly that Newby was reaching for a weapon. Prosecutors said Newby was running away when he was shot.
During a scuffle between Mattingly and Newby in the parking lot, Mattingly’s gun fired once. Newby and Mattingly separated and Newby ran away, but “turned his head back a few times to see where we were,” Thomerson testified.
He said Newby then turned and faced them, but Thomerson said he could only see Newby above the chest, and couldn’t see Newby’s hands.
Thomerson had initially told police that Newby was running away and Mattingly was moving toward him. But he contradicted that in later statements to investigators, saying “he wasn’t actually running away. Especially seeing other foot chases, he was definitely doing something else other than simply running to get away and like I said he faced us several times,” according to court records released in March.
A medical examiner who performed an autopsy on Newby’s body also testified on Monday.
Newby was hit by three bullets: one in his upper right back and two in his lower back, said Barbara Weakley-Jones, Jefferson County’s assistant chief medical examiner.
Weakley-Jones said all three bullets were traveling at an upward, 45-degree angle as they entered Newby’s body.
The gun that killed Newby “either has to be pointing upward ... or the body has to be anterior” or bent over, Weakley-Jones testified. She said she couldn’t determine the order of the shots but did indicate that Newby’s body had turned during the shooting. She also could not determine which way Newby had turned.