LEXINGTON, Ky. _ For the second time, Megan Price had to recount for a jury the tragic events surrounding her husband's 2014 shooting death.
Price testified at a 2018 trial, but that jury was unable to reach a verdict against Dawan Q. Mulazim, 36, in the murder of Price's husband Jonathan, a Marine. Last Thursday, a second trial began in the case.
Mulazim was convicted of a 2014 robbery at a Lexington Quality Inn at his 2018 trial, but the jury couldn't reach verdicts in the robbery of the Prices or a separate Second Street robbery that happened weeks after the shooting.
Mulazim's retrial began Thursday after nearly two weeks of jury selection.
Monday, Megan Price told the new set of jurors that she and her husband were out in Lexington celebrating her June 20 birthday. After a few hours at Austin City Saloon, she and her husband had gone out to the parking lot. They were sitting on the bumper of their friend's car at 1 a.m. on June 21, 2014, when they were approached by two men with guns.
Megan Price first noticed a man in a white shirt, who was walking toward her "head-on" and pointing a gun at her and her husband. When the man in the white shirt told Megan Price to give him her money, Jonathan Price told her to run.
When she turned to look at her husband, she saw that a second man had a gun to his head.
"There was nowhere to run," Megan Price said Monday.
While the man in the white shirt was trying to take Megan Price's cross-body purse off of her, Jonathan Price was fighting with the other man, who Megan remembered was wearing a black shirt. Megan Price saw the man in the black shirt hit Jonathan Price and push him against a nearby truck.
Jonathan Price had fallen to the ground, face down, when Megan Price heard two shots. One of the shots went through Megan Price's leg, and the other struck Jonathan Price in the back. After the shots were fired, the man in the white shirt took a wallet from Jonathan Price's back pocket and the two assailants walked away, Megan Price said Monday.
Prosecutors argue that the man in the black shirt was Mulazim, and that the man in the white shirt was his nephew, Quincinio Canada.
The bullet that passed through Megan Price's leg left a starburst fracture in her femur just above the knee, she said. She tried desperately to reach her husband, but couldn't move because of the injury.
She immediately called 911 and spoke to a dispatcher while she waited for police and paramedics to arrive. On the call, which was played for jurors, Megan Price frantically said that she and her husband had been shot, and that she needed to get to her husband.
During the call Megan Price can be heard yelling, "Jonathan, I love you!"
"I wanted him to hear me say 'I love you' one more time," Megan Price said when asked at trial why she yelled out to him.
Later in the call, Megan Price can be heard quietly telling the dispatcher, "It's my birthday."
When paramedics arrived, Megan Price insisted that they help Jonathan before helping her.
"I didn't want to lose my husband," Megan Price said Monday.
When responders arrived, police and paramedics worked to revive Jonathan Price. He was pronounced dead at University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital.
Jonathan Price's mother, Debbie Price, had someone drive her from her home in Versailles to University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital after she was told there had been a "mugging."
After a while, she was told that her son had died.
Debbie Price and Megan Price, whose bed had to be wheeled into the hospital room, were taken to see Jonathan's body, they both testified Monday. Other family and friends had gone into the room with them, but after a while, Megan Price told everyone but Debbie Price to leave.
"She said, 'she brought him into this world, she should be the last to see him,'" Debbie Price said Monday.
Megan Price said she broke down when she was told her husband didn't make it, and was "a wreck" when detectives talked to her at the hospital.
The day of the shooting, Megan Price had a surgery in which a metal plate was put into her leg. The metal plate remains in her leg, and she still suffers from leg, hip and back pain connected to the injury. The leg that was injured has atrophied and is noticeably smaller than her other leg, she testified Monday.
Megan Price told investigators after the shooting that both attackers had been of average height, and that the man in the white shirt had dreadlocks while the man in the black shirt had short hair.
During the investigation of what happened, Megan Price would not pick suspects out of a photo line-up. She said Monday that she did not want to pick the wrong person.
Mulazim's co-defendant, Quincinio Canada, was also tried in connection with Austin City Saloon shooting and the robberies at Quality Inn and on Second Street. He was acquitted of murder, robbery and assault in the Austin City Saloon shooting, but found guilty in the Quality Inn robbery. He was sentenced to 50 years in the case.
Mulazim has already been sentenced to 50 years in the Quality Inn robbery and an additional 10 years on an evidence tampering charge.
