LAWTON, Okla_The trial for
the second of three Fort
Sill soldiers accused in
a brutal home invasion started Tuesday. Claude Byrd is charged with six counts
of kidnapping and four counts of robbery. Prosecutors say Byrd and the other
soldiers tied up six people in an apartment near 17th and C Avenue and shot four of them in September
of 2011.
The trial moved
very quickly, in fact, all the testimony was given Tuesday. It was a non-jury trial, so Judge Keith Aycock
will render the verdict. Among the prosecution witnesses were detectives who
worked the crime scene. But, the defendant himself also took the stand.
Byrd testified
they had simply gone to the apartment that night to get some things back that
had been stolen from them. He said the
other two men came up with a plan to get inside the apartment by pretending to
want to buy drugs, while Byrd waited across the hall in a friend's
apartment.
Byrd testified
when he poked his head in the apartment where the other men had gone, he saw Kevon
McLaren holding two guns, one pointing at three men face down on the floor and
the other at a woman on a couch.
He said the
other man was going back and forth to a back room, stacking items he had
gathered in the living room. He said they ordered him to bring over duct tape
from the other apartment and that McLaren told him at gunpoint to put the
things they'd gathered in McLaren's car and to take them to the apartment they
shared.
When he
returned, he said McLaren told him to wait in the car, giving him one of his
guns, still pointing the other at the victims. He said as he was walking out,
he heard several gun shots coming from the apartment.
Moments later, Byrd
said McLaren came running out of the apartment, yelling "the gun has
jammed" and grabbed a different gun and ran back into the complex. He said
within seconds of McLaren leaving, he heard 4 or 5 more shots and moments
later, all three left.
Testimony in
the trial is now over. Judge Aycock said
he will consider the evidence and release his verdict sometime next week.
