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A mother and her daughter testified in court Wednesday about seeing a gunman shoot and kill San Antonio police Detective Benjamin Marconi while he was sitting in his patrol car.
The women were among several witnesses for the prosecution who testified that they were close to the scene of the crime during the third day of the capital murder trial of Otis McKane.
Jennifer Patterson and her daughter, Alexandria, were on their way to brunch at Mi Tierra restaurant the morning of Nov. 20, 2016, when Jennifer said something caught their attention on Santa Rosa Avenue.
“What the f***! He’s got a gun, Mom. He’s got a gun?” Jennifer Patterson testified about what her daughter said that morning. “I immediately knew what she was talking about. There was a man who had a gun, and something was going to happen.”
Jennifer Patterson said she saw a man “prance” out of his car toward the SAPD unit that Marconi was in and saw the gunman open fire.
“Pow, pow, flame, flame. Even if I couldn’t hear, I could see what happened,” Jennifer Patterson said.
Patterson said she drove off and then made a U-turn about a block away to return and check on Marconi.
“We ran to the officer’s car, and told my daughter, ‘Go sit over there.’ It was obvious by a hole in his temple that there was nothing that could be done for him,” Patterson said.
Some of Jennifer Patterson’s testimony drew the ire of defense lawyers, saying that she told the jurors some things that weren’t in her witness statement. Prosecutors countered by saying that Patterson was simply saying what she saw.
Alexandria Patterson, who testified after her mother, said that she heard two shots and made eye contact with the gunman.
She said she then called 911 and told her mother to turn back.
During the 911 call, which was played in court, you can hear a woman saying, “A man shot a cop.” At that point, Alexandria Patterson wiped tears from her eyes.
Alexandria Patterson said the next day she saw a picture of McKane in a television newscast.
“I saw his eyes and I knew it was him immediately,” she said. When asked how certain she was about McKane being the man in the picture, Alexandria Patterson said, “100%.”
A VIA bus driver testified that he identified McKane out of a photo lineup as the gunman who killed Marconi.
Juan Enciso said that he was driving a group of military personnel to a USO facility downtown the morning of the shooting.
Enciso testified that he slowed down immediately because “he heard a gunshot.”
He also said he saw a man run to a black car after the shooting.
Attorneys argued over whether his testimony was admissible because Enciso made a change on the lineup paperwork.
Enciso testified that he initially checked a box saying he couldn’t make a proper identification but then changed the paperwork indicating that he could identify McKane as the suspect. He testified that he was not pressured to change his answer but said he did so after realizing his mistake.
Another prosecution witness who testified that he witnessed the slaying was Mike Flores, who told jurors he was driving by at the time of the shooting and was the first person to find the slain officer in his vehicle.
“I looked inside and saw officer hunched over and saw blood,” Flores said. He testified that after hearing gunshots, he saw McKane run away from the police unit to his car and speed off.
Joseph Hinojosa, an assistant manager at Rent-A-Tire, didn’t witness the shooting, but he testified that he called police the next day and provided them with information about McKane after seeing news coverage about the shooting.
Hinojosa said that McKane bought some tires and wheels from the business and was making payments for the items.
McKane could face the death penalty if he is found guilty.
The trial will resume Thursday at 12:30 p.m. You can watch every moment live on KSAT in this article.
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