BALTIMORE ��The last time Brandon Ross saw Freddie Gray conscious, Gray was in shackles and being moved head first onto the floor of a police van by several officers. Ross was screaming in anger from the curb.
"I was upset _ upset how they was treating my friend," Ross said Friday in a Baltimore courtroom.
His testimony during the second day of the trial of police Lt. Brian Rice brought into focus two competing portraits of Rice that prosecutors and defense attorneys have tried to paint.
As Ross walked through the events of that April morning last year _ establishing Rice's involvement in Gray's arrest, as well as his own actions at the scene _ Rice alternately came off as a "jerk," as Ross described him, and as the top-ranking officer forced to make a quick decision in a volatile situation, as his defense has suggested.
Deputy State's Attorney Janice Bledsoe drew out Ross' criticisms of Rice, asking him about Rice's "tone of voice" during Gray's arrest. Ross said it was "loud, aggressive, threatening."
On cross-examination, Chaz Ball, one of Rice's attorneys, pushed Ross in another direction, getting him to admit that it had sounded like Gray was kicking inside the van, that Gray had been angry and upset, and that his demands to see a supervisor had drawn Rice's attention.
While Ross insisted that he and others on the scene were not "hindering (Rice) from doing his job," his cellphone video from the incident, played in full, showed him and others screaming at officers.
Rice, 42, faces involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct charges in Gray's arrest and death. He pleaded not guilty to all of them. He has put his legal fate in the hands of Circuit Judge Barry G. Williams rather than a 12-member jury.
Rice is the highest-ranking of six city police officers charged in Gray's arrest and death, and the fourth to go to trial. One had a mistrial, and two were acquitted. All six pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Gray suffered a severe spinal cord injury in the back of the transport van in which Rice and one of the acquitted officers _ Edward Nero _ placed him. Gray's death a week later sparked widespread protests against police brutality.
