Another witness who had helped investigators build a case against LaShawn R. Cecil on Tuesday recanted his statement from the witness stand at Cecil's murder trial in New London Superior Court, the second witness in two days to do so.

Cecil, 36, is on trial in the Dec. 14, 2011, shooting death of Jaclyn Wirth, who was home alone with her two young children when a gunman fired several rounds through the front door of her apartment at 6 E. Baltic St., striking her multiple times.

In November 2014 and 2015, William Colello, 33, gave police sworn statements indicating that he had driven Cecil and drug dealer Harold K. "Haas" Butler to Wirth's apartment that night. He said Cecil got out of the car, then returned five or 10 minutes later and said, "Let's get out of here."

Colello expressed sympathy for Wirth from the witness stand Tuesday, saying she is related to his wife and that he doesn't know why somebody would kill an innocent woman. But he steadfastly denied his statement was true and asserted he had been coerced by police. He said investigators had confronted him about the crime after raiding his apartment and had threatened to take him away from his children. He said he got tired after hours of questioning and told them what he thought they wanted to hear.

"They were saying I was somewhere I wasn't," Colello testified. "They were trying to put me on a scene I wasn't at."

Prosecutor Stephen M. Carney had prepared the court during pretrial arguments that Colello was unlikely to verify his statement from the witness stand. Colello had balked as the state prepared to call him to the witness stand during a preliminary court proceeding known as a probable cause hearing in August 2015. He checked himself in to a psychiatric ward at The William W. Backus Hospital, delaying the hearing for several days. Once he was released from the hospital and called to testify, he recanted the statements.

On Tuesday, Colello said from the witness stand that he had gone to the hospital after losing all his money on a gambling spree and becoming suicidal.

His recantation left the state in the position of discrediting its own witness. Over the objection of defense attorney Christopher Duby, Carney successfully argued to have the jury watch a three-hour video recording of Colello's interview with police.

The trial will not convene on Wednesday. The jury is expected to watch the video when the trial resumes on Thursday.

On Monday, witness Jeremy Dawson also had contended that police had coerced him into saying that Cecil told him he killed Wirth. The jury had watched a videotaped recording of Dawson's police interrogation.

k.florin@theday.com