Lyndo Jones says he didn’t know what was happening when a bright light shined into his pickup truck and a man yelled profanity-laced commands.
Jones, 32, testified Monday about what happened moments before a police officer shot him twice in the back. The former Mesquite police officer, Derick Wiley, is on trial a second time in the November 2017 shooting.
The first trial ended in a mistrial after jurors could not agree on a verdict after 10 hours of deliberation in September.
Wiley is charged with aggravated assault by a public servant. He faces up to life in prison if convicted. The ex-officer plans to ask for probation, court records show.
The officer responded to a 911 call Nov. 8, 2017, about a suspicious person in a truck parked outside a Mesquite business.
Wiley testified during the first trial that he feared Jones was reaching for a weapon in his truck and ordered him out of the vehicle. He also said he believed the man was burglarizing the truck.
Jones was unarmed and owned the vehicle.
He testified Monday that he "didn't know what was happening" when Wiley ordered him from his truck.
He said the man was "telling me what to do, and I did what I was told."
Jurors watched the nearly one-minute interaction captured on Wiley's body camera and a dash camera in the patrol vehicle.
At one point, Jones is on the ground and Wiley's knee was on his back. Jones groans and rolls away. He appears to be running away when Wiley shoots him twice, striking the man in the back.
Prosecutor Bryan Mitchell told the seven women and five men of the jury, that ‘this is a simple case.’
“This is a case of a reckless police officer, who from the minute he showed up, was hellbent on violence,” Mitchell said during opening statements Monday.
Defense attorneys painted a more complex picture that focuses on ‘a defiant man, a peace officer and politics.’
“This case is anything but simple,” defense attorney Rafael Sierra told jurors during opening statements.
