New shooting witness revealed in Ohio officer's trial
CINCINNATI — Alicia Napier saw much of the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man from her driver's side mirror.
On July 19, 2015, the 26-year-old was loading her two young children into her car parked on the same side of the street where Ray Tensing, then a University of Cincinnati police officer, had pulled over Sam DuBose for not having a front license plate.
“Something told me to keep watching,” she said.
Napier’s testimony Wednesday in the murder case againstTensing shocked many in the courtroom, including DuBose’s family. Tensing is standing trial in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court on charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter.
Napier is believed to be the only civilian witness to the shooting that police have interviewed. Her testimony was the first time she has told her story publicly.
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“After I hear the ‘pow,’ that’s when I (saw) DuBose’s car move in the middle of the street,” Napier said.
A key point for both the prosecution and defense: whether DuBose was driving away, dragging Tensing with him, before Tensing shot DuBose once in the head.
Prosecutors contend that Tensing wasn't dragged. Tensing’s lawyer said the officer was, and that was why he acted in self-defense.
Napier’s testimony came on the first full day of testimony, a day that also saw two of Tensing’s fellow officers testify they heard the sound of squealing tires before the gunshot.
They had gone to the scene of the shooting in Cincinnati's Mount Auburn neighborhood after Tensing radioed that the vehicle he was pulling over had been “slow to stop.”
Officer Philip Kidd, a 10-year veteran, said he heard “tires squealing,” saw DuBose’s car move, heard a gunshot, then saw Tensing “fall away from the car.”
An officer that Kidd was training that day, David Lindenschmidt, gave a similar account.
"As I opened my … door, I could hear squealing tires, then within a couple seconds, a gunshot," Lindenschmidt said.
In the moments after the shooting, Kidd, Lindenschmidt and Tensing ran to the corner where DuBose’s car had crashed into a utility pole. Prosecutors said DuBose’s foot hit the gas pedal in a “postmortem reflex.”
In Kidd’s body camera video, which was played Wednesday, Tensing told Kidd: “He was dragging me. … I just got my hand and my arm caught.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” Kidd responded.
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In court Wednesday, Kidd admitted that he never saw Tensing being dragged. He did estimate that Tensing ended up about 10 feet away from where the traffic stop began.
“I saw him moving and the car moving,” he told Tensing’s lawyer, Stew Mathews.
Jurors for the first time Wednesday saw the body-cam videos of all three officers. During the moment in Tensing's bodycam video when Tensing shot DuBose in the head, one juror opened her mouth in apparent shock.
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After the video was shown, Tensing, sitting at the defense table, took a deep breath and exhaled.
Napier testified that she initially believed DuBose had shot Tensing and drove away. She said she ducked down inside her car after the gunshot and heard DuBose's 1998 Honda Accord drive by.
She then heard another sound that she thought was a gunshot but likely was the sound of DuBose's car striking a guard rail.
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When Cincinnati police detectives interviewed Napier, who drove away from the scene, later that night, she still believed a police officer had been shot.
Among those in court were several of DuBose's family members, including his mother, sisters and brothers. They have been sitting on one side of Judge Megan Shanahan's courtroom; Tensing's family has been sitting on the opposite side.
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