CHICAGO _ Jurors on Tuesday watched the much-anticipated defense animation that re-created the shooting of Laquan McDonald from Officer Jason Van Dyke's perspective.
The four-minute "laser-based analysis" offered the jury a much different view of the same events caught in the now-infamous police dashboard camera video. It was created by Jason Fries, who heads a California company that specializes in re-creating events for law enforcement and other clients.
In the animation, McDonald is shown walking down Pulaski Road as Van Dyke and his partner get out of their squad car. The view then shifts to an overhead perspective above the street, showing McDonald _ in somewhat crude, herky-jerky movements _ walking to a point that was almost parallel to Van Dyke, who had his gun drawn.
The animation then switches to an angle from behind Van Dyke's shoulder. It shows McDonald closing from 39 feet to 13 feet in a few seconds before Van Dyke opened fire as the teen was just at the point of passing south of the officer.
Van Dyke and his partner had pulled up ahead of McDonald as he walked south on Pulaski Road.
As in the dashcam video, the animation shows McDonald spin and fall to the street as Van Dyke continued to fire. The first shot shown in the video was the one that the defense pathologist has previously testified was the fatal wound _ a gunshot to McDonald's chest that severed his pulmonary artery.
Fries testified that he consulted with Dr. Shaku Teas, the pathologist hired by the defense, while trying to re-create where the first shots struck McDonald.
Unlike the dashcam video, the animation ends once McDonald hits the pavement and does not depict Van Dyke continuing to shoot as the teen laid on the street.
Fries said he relied on a number of factors in creating the animation, including police radio traffic, surveillance cameras and footage of the area that his company shot using a drone.
But the most useful tool in re-creating a shooting with many moving parts was the police dashcam video, he said.
"The video really made our job easier," he said.
During an hourlong cross-examination, prosecutor Marilyn Hite Ross peppered Fries with a series of questions meant to discount the video re-creation.
The prosecutor pointed out many of the re-created video's omissions, including the majority of the 16 gunshots or the menacing gesture that Van Dyke's partner said McDonald made shortly before being shot.
In the shooting portion of the animated video, McDonald is wearing all black, but Hite Ross showed a picture of the teen in blue jeans with large white pockets and a dark hoodie. Fries told the jury he typically uses crash test dummy-like figures in his animation, but he put black skin on the McDonald character.
Ross repeatedly tried to drive home the point to the jury that the defense's video was not real, unlike the actual dashcam video evidence.
"An animation is a drawing, isn't it, sir?" the prosecutor said. "Whether you do it by hand or on a computer?"
"I respectfully disagree with you," Fries responded. "I've never described it _ in the 20 years I've been doing this _ as a drawing."
He instead characterized his video as a computer model _ and later a painting.
Fries said he was not certain how much the defense paid his company, but the usual hourly rate charged by his business ranges from $195 to $375 depending on which employee does the work. He said his firm typically puts in about 100 hours for this type of work.
The trial recessed early Tuesday afternoon, in part because Judge Vincent Gaughan blocked at least two scheduled defense witnesses from testifying.
The first was a Chicago Transit Authority employee who would bolster the defense team's assertion that McDonald was using a disabled veteran's public transit card on the night of his death. Gaughan ruled there was no proof McDonald actually used the card _ he does not appear on any on-board security videos _ but it wouldn't matter if he had.
"Being on the CTA and taking multiples rides in one day doesn't prove anything," the judge said.
Daniel Herbert, Van Dyke's lead lawyer, had made a brief reference to the CTA card in his opening statement last week while saying McDonald had gone "on a wild rampage" in the 24 hours before his shooting.
The judge also refused to let a Chicago police officer testify about an incident involving McDonald hours before the shooting. Prosecutors successfully argued the patrol officer did not fill out a contact card during the incident and could not testify under oath that it was definitely McDonald.
The defense, though, is expected to call the woman whose 911 call sparked the police contact.
Yvette Patterson told the Chicago Tribune she called 911 before 3 a.m. on the morning of the shooting on Oct. 20, 2014, after encountering McDonald as she tried to park behind her home in the Lawndale neighborhood on the city's West Side. She lives next door to McDonald's aunt.
The teen told Patterson that he was locked out of his aunt's home and asked if he could borrow her car, she said.
Pattterson told the Tribune that McDonald was not aggressive, but she called 911 anyway because it was dark and she had never met him before.
Two police officers questioned McDonald, but Patterson declined to sign a complaint, she said. No arrest was made.
McDonald was killed about 19 hours later.
The jury returns Wednesday on the third day of the defense's case. So far, jurors have heard from 24 prosecution witnesses and six from the defense.
