Emotional video dominates Iraq veteran's manslaughter trial
Thursday's proceedings in the manslaughter trial of an Iraq war veteran were dominated by an emotionally charged video shown to jurors of Upland police interviewing a woman whose boyfriend had just been shot in the head.
During the interview, conducted about three hours after Cesar Valdez, 24, was shot, his girlfriend, Heather Montoya, told police she saw Christopher Sullivan point a handgun at Valdez.
Five seconds later, she said she heard a gunshot and saw Valdez lying on the ground, bleeding from his head.
During the first half of the hour-long interview, Montoya was not aware that Valdez, her boyfriend of two years, had died of his injuries.
When a detective told her that Valdez had died, she became inconsolable.
For the next 25 minutes, jurors watched video of Montoya reacting with grief and disbelief to her boyfriend's death.
"I didn't even get to say goodbye to him," she said between sobs. "Oh my God. I can't believe this. I can't believe it."
Sullivan, a 26-year-old former Marine and former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, faces up to 21 years in prison for the April 9, 2006 shooting of Valdez, a Marine and one of Sullivan's closest friends.
During his cross-examination of Montoya, Sullivan's attorney, David Goldstein, produced an e-mail Montoya sent to Sullivan 16 days after shooting. Montoya apparently never shared the message with prosecutors.
In the e-mail, whose subject line was, "We're all in this together," Montoya called the shooting an accident.
"I just know that Cesar would not want you to be blamed for this," she wrote to Sullivan.
"I was there and you can trust me," she continued. "I know what happened. I know this was an accident."
Montoya testified that her message wasn't entirely truthful. She said she wanted Sullivan to feel comfortable, and wanted him to tell her what happened.
Goldstein repeatedly questioned Montoya about statements she made to police and others that Valdez grabbed the gun before it fired.
She testified Thursday that she did not see Valdez grab the gun. She said Sullivan told her that Valdez grabbed the gun, and she may have initially repeated Sullivan's account as fact though she didn't know it was true.
During his opening statement last week in West Valley Superior Court, Goldstein told jurors that Valdez grabbed Sullivan's pistol and pulled it into his mouth. Valdez tugging on the gun caused it to fire, Goldstein said.
After Montoya testified, the medical examiner who performed Valdez's autopsy testified that Sullivan's gun discharged inside Valdez's mouth, with the barrel of the weapon between Valdez's left gums and left cheek when it fired.
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