Jury hears 911 call, views video of Norwich crime scene as murder trial begins
Homicide victim Jaclyn Wirth's relatives sobbed quietly Thursday morning as they listened to the 911 call the 26-year-old stay-at-home mother placed in December 2011 as she lay dying on the floor of her Norwich apartment.
"I heard something," she told the dispatcher. "I woke up. I went into the hallway and they shot through the door."
Prosecutor Stephen M. Carney played the recording as his opening salvo at the murder trial of LaShawn R. Cecil, who is accused of fatally shooting Wirth while trying to collect a drug debt.
For several agonizing minutes, Wirth, gasping for breath, moaning and bewildered about what had happened, implored the first responders to hurry up. In the background, her 7-year-old son, Sergio, could be heard begging his mother repeatedly not to pass out.
Wirth first told the dispatcher she had been shot in the arm, but as the minutes passed she realized the severity of her injuries.
"I think I was shot all over my body," she said. "I'm pouring out blood. I'm passing out."
She was able to instruct Sergio to unlock the door when police arrived. Still conscious when police and ambulance crews arrived at 6 East Baltic St., she was taken to The William W. Backus Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Cecil, arrested in 2015 after police built a case that involves several reluctant witnesses, has pleaded not guilty to murder and is on trial in New London Superior Court. As the trial got underway before a jury of 12 regular members and four alternates, he sat between defense attorneys Christopher Duby and Patrick White wearing a royal blue dress shirt and slacks. Four family members sat behind him in the gallery.
Wirth's relatives sat on the other side of the court. Despite a sequestration order that prohibits potential witnesses in the case from being in the courtroom, Judge Barbara Bailey Jongbloed said Wirth's aunts Peggy Lufkin and Susan Wirth could attend the proceeding. Both may be called by the defense.
Another potential witness at the courthouse was Michael Boyce, Wirth's boyfriend, who was incarcerated at the time of her death. The judge said he could not enter the courtroom and listen to the evidence and asked others in the courtroom not to talk to him about the testimony they hear. Police allege that Cecil was trying to collect money owned to alleged drug dealer Harold Butler by Boyce's brother, Ezekiel Boyce.
As the prosecutor put photographs of Wirth's apartment on the projector, Patrolman Scott DuPointe testified that he was only about a quarter of a mile away from the Mohegan Commons apartment complex when the call came in but that he had trouble finding the apartment because the buildings "were not properly numbered."
DuPointe said Wirth was able to answer a few questions and that she would not allow him to check her injuries. When the ambulance crew arrived and began tending to Wirth, DuPointe said he went into the bedroom and found Wirth's youngest son, 2-year-old Kymani, sitting on the bed.
"Is Mommy died?" the toddler asked.
DuPointe said he told Kymani that his mom was getting help, picked him up and handed him to another officer. He said he got a diaper and a change of clothes for the boy, who had urinated. Another officer was tending to Kymani's big brother, Sergio, in the kitchen.
DuPointe said he saw a few bullet holes in the closet to the right of the front entry and more near the bathroom. In the bedroom, there was blood.
"The young boy had traveled down the hall in his socks," he said.
There were numerous shell casings in the stairwell, he said. Duby, Cecil's attorney, asked the officer about a surveillance camera near an air vent on the apartment's exterior. DuPointe said the camera was not working at the time.
Jurors then began watching a video of the crime scene that was recorded by Daniel Cargill from the state police Eastern District Major Crime Squad.
The trial is expected to last up to 2½ weeks.
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