DALLAS _ The now-fired Balch Springs police officer who fatally shot 15-year-old Jordan Edwards took the stand Thursday to try to spare himself from a murder conviction.
Roy Oliver is charged with killing Jordan Edwards in April 2017 as he sat in a car leaving a party.
Moments before Oliver fired, gunshots had rung out in the neighborhood. They turned out to have come from the parking lot of a nearby nursing home and had nothing to do with Jordan or the vehicle he was in.
But Oliver testified that he felt he had to shoot because he feared a fellow officer was in danger of being run over.
The car Jordan was in had come to a stop for a moment but then moved forward, he said.
"I had to make a decision. This car is about to hit my partner," Oliver told jurors. "I had no other option."
As he testified, Oliver gently swiveled back and forth in a brown leather chair on the witness stand as he answered questions from one of his attorneys, Bob Gill.
The day of the shooting, Oliver testified, nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He'd worked a 12-hour shift the previous day and slept five or six hours.
He got in an hour before his 6 p.m. shift just as he usually did. He made sure his car had gas and was ready to go when his workday officially began, he said.
Oliver and another officer, Tyler Gross, responded to the call about intoxicated kids in the street, Oliver said, so he followed Gross onto the street where the party was. Oliver was serving as backup to Gross, he said.
Partygoers were streaming out of the house as the officers arrived. No one was stumbling or disrespectful, he said. Gross left the red and blue lights on his car flashing. Oliver said he left only the steady, nonflashing lights on the end of the bar on top of his patrol car.
Gross went inside and Oliver checked the outside of the house for alcohol and safety issues before heading in. Once he got inside, the officers heard gunshots.
"Oh no, active shooter," Oliver said about what he immediately thought.
He said he was concerned because the officers' presence had pushed people out of the home, some in the direction of the shots.
The officers ran outside and Oliver said people were screaming and he asked dispatch for help. In such situations, officers "can get rattled," he said.
He was trying to assess how many shooters there were and what they were firing with, he testified. He grabbed his rifle from his patrol car because he didn't feel his pistol was adequate.
It was later determined that no alcohol was served at the party, and no one in the car with Jordan had any weapons.
Gross headed toward the gunfire, Oliver said, and he readied his rifle to be able to fire.
It was dark and Oliver walked toward Gross' voice.
Gross "got on the radio and called out a license plate," Oliver said. Gross had walked past other cars and didn't read the plate numbers.
"There's something go on with this car and I've got to get up there to help him with it," Oliver recalled thinking.
Oliver ran toward Gross and testified he heard Gross yell "stop the ... car."
"I thought he had located the shooter or shooters or at least has some type of information toward it," Oliver said.
As Oliver got closer to testifying about the moment he fired his rifle, Jordan's stepmother bowed her head and leaned forward. Jordan's father kept looking ahead, watching Oliver on the stand.
The car backed up, going up an incline of two to two-and-a-half feet. The car drove from an east-west street, Baron Drive, to the north-south street Shepherd Lane.
As Oliver ran toward Shepherd, he saw Gross _ who had his weapon out _ trying to shine a light into the car.
A street light shone on the Impala, causing a reflection that he said kept him from getting a good view of what was in the car. He said he could see two people inside but not many details other than a silhouette moving.
Oliver said he had no idea who was in the car. He said he "heard a pop, a possible gunshot from inside the car." But the movement of the car toward Gross was what caused him to shoot.
He made the decision to shoot "when the vehicle was moving toward my partner," he said. He was "trying to stop threats."
His first thought after firing, Oliver said, was to make sure Gross was OK.
Lane asked Oliver whether he asked about Gross as an alibi so it would be picked up by the microphone on the body camera.
"I'm not that fast," Oliver replied. "I don't think anyone is in that situation."
Afterward, Oliver said, "I was in shock. I was in shock for days."
The realization of who he had shot was horrifying, he said. He checked Jordan's pulse and felt nothing.
"It was punch to the gut," Oliver said, calling it "sickening" _ a bad situation that kept getting worse.
"My heart sank. For a minute there, it was hard to breathe."
Jordan's family walked out as he spoke, but jurors were riveted by his account of events. They turned down a break when state District Judge Brandon Birmingham offered one.
Earlier in his testimony, Oliver said he didn't know much about Balch Springs when he started there _ just that the city needed police officers because the department was often shorthanded.
The police department is majority white, while minorities make up 80 percent of the city's population.
Jordan's father and stepmother, whom he called "mom," Odell and Charmaine Edwards, sat shoulder-to-shoulder in the front row quietly watching his testimony.
Oliver remains on the witness stand. He is the first witness the defense called after prosecutors rested Tuesday morning.
Lane, in his opening statement to the jury, told jurors that they had to consider the shooting from Oliver's point of view, not anyone else's, when they deliberate whether "Roy Oliver was reasonable" when he fired at the car.
Lane told the jury that Jordan's death was a tragedy for the Edwards family and the community _ and that it is a tragedy any time an officer must make the decision whether to shoot.
Oliver spoke conversationally during his testimony, frequently looking at jurors as he spoke. His bald head shone under the lights of the courtroom. On the lapel of his charcoal suit, he wore a puzzle-piece-shape pin that says "autism." His young son, Tab, has autism.
He has a daughter born to his ex-wife 12 days apart from his son. She was artificially inseminated with his sperm. Oliver testified he gave his word to her to have a child with her and believed he should keep it even thought they divorced. He said he pays child support and saw his daughter once a week until the shooting.
Oliver also told jurors about his service in the Army and his deployment to Iraq in 2004.
He told jurors he was unprepared for what he saw when he arrived. Within 24 hours, his unit was attacked by mortar fire. He and other soldiers lived in what were essentially shipping containers with beds and air conditioners.
"I don't think you can ever be 100 percent prepared for that," Oliver testified.
He struggled to control his emotions as he told jurors about a supply sergeant who was killed by a suicide bomber in the mess hall.
Oliver said he and other soldiers would have died, too, if they had not chosen to eat in a different mess hall nearby because it was serving bacon cheeseburgers. He said he eats a bacon cheeseburger every Dec. 21, the anniversary of the attack.
