Mehserle weeps: 'I didn't think I had my gun'

(06-26) 04:00 PDT Los Angeles - --

"I didn't think I had my gun."

Those were the words Friday of former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle, who wept on the witness stand at his murder trial as he testified that he had accidentally shot and killed Oscar Grant while intending to fire Taser darts into the unarmed man's back.

But after waiting for a year and a half to hear an explanation from Mehserle, Grant's family was not satisfied. They said the story was a lie, the tears a piece of courtroom theater.

Mehserle said that seconds before the shooting, he had decided to shock the 22-year-old Grant with a Taser because he saw him dig his right hand into his pants pocket - the same hand Mehserle was trying to handcuff on the platform of the Fruitvale Station in Oakland during an arrest early Jan. 1, 2009.

The pistol pull was smooth, with no "red flags" to tell him he hadn't grabbed his Taser, said the 28-year-old ex-officer. He didn't realize he had shot Grant, he testified, until he looked at his right hand after firing and saw he was holding his pistol.

"I didn't think I had my gun," Mehserle told the jury in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. "I remember the pop. It wasn't very loud. It wasn't like a gunshot, and I remember wondering what went wrong with the Taser.

"I remember looking to my right side and seeing my gun in my right hand," Mehserle said. "I didn't know what to think. I just thought it shouldn't have been there."

Defense attorney Michael Rains asked Mehserle what he remembered after that, and the former officer, by now crying, struggled with the words. "I remember Mr. Grant said, 'You shot me,' " he said.

Heckler's yell bring arrest

Grant's mother, Wanda Johnson, quickly left the courtroom as a Bay Area man identified by friends and authorities as Tim Killings, 24, stood and yelled, "Maybe you should save those f- tears, dude."

Bailiffs arrested Killings on suspicion of disorderly conduct and led him from court, and Judge Robert Perry declared a brief recess.

After testimony resumed, Mehserle said that after the shooting, "I think that I was in my own world."

He said he had put pressure on Grant's back wound to try to stop the bleeding. He also briefly handcuffed and searched him, he testified.

About 10 minutes later, a BART lieutenant led him away and drove him to police headquarters at the Lake Merritt Station. At about this time, he said, he realized his hands were stained with Grant's blood.

Family member skeptical

Outside court, Grant's uncle Daryl Johnson said he and other family members believed Mehserle's tears were "manufactured" to gain jurors' sympathy. He said the Taser story was a fabrication.

"You start a lie, and then you have to keep covering it up," Johnson said. "He will never wash my nephew's blood off his hands."

Mehserle completed his testimony at the end of the day, after he began late Thursday. Under questioning by Rains, he said the shooting had happened as he tried to handcuff Grant after being told to do so by another BART officer, Anthony Pirone, who was fired this year for his actions that night.

Pirone was the officer who first detained Grant after a reported fight on a train that involved Grant.

Mehserle said Grant had been on his knees with his hands behind his back, but had tensed up and pulled away when Mehserle grabbed his right hand. "He freed it from my grip," Mehserle said.

Grant fell, and Mehserle got on his knees behind him. He ordered Grant to give up his hands and pulled at his right arm, he said, but Grant did not comply.

"As soon as I thought I started to get it, I saw his hand going into his right front pocket," Mehserle said. "I remember the digging motion with his right hand. It was like he was looking for something. I was pulling as hard as I could to get it out."

'I'm going to Tase him'

Mehserle said he thought Grant might be going for a gun.

"I made the decision at that point to Tase him," Mehserle continued, "because I didn't know why he was keeping his hand from me." Mehserle said he had twice shouted, "I'm going to Tase him."

He stood up so the Taser probes would have room to spread out before connecting with Grant's back, he said.

Mehserle said he hadn't heard Grant complaining that he couldn't breathe - something Grant's friends said they had heard. And he said he had been paying no attention to the actions of Pirone, who testified that he believed he had Grant under control just before the shooting.

Video footage of the shooting shows that as Mehserle raised the gun, Pirone had his left knee on Grant's neck. Pirone's left hand was pressing Grant's head into the platform, and Pirone's right hand was holding Grant's right arm - the same one Mehserle had struggled with - behind his back.

"I had made the decision already to Tase," Mehserle said. "I didn't know where (Grant's) hands were."

Under cross-examination by Alameda County prosecutor David Stein, Mehserle acknowledged he hadn't told his fellow officers later that morning that he had intended to pull his Taser - even one of his best friends in the department, who sat with him for hours at BART police headquarters.

Stein asked Mehserle whether he could hear himself shouting, "I'm going to Tase him," on the videos of the shooting. Mehserle said he could not.

Stein seized on what he regards as holes in Mehserle's story. If you thought Grant might pull a gun, Stein asked, why would you stand up and create distance between yourself and the threat?

"Couldn't he have spun around and shot you?" Stein asked.

"Now that I think about it," Mehserle said, "that's a possibility, yes sir."

Navigating safety devices

Stein got out the utility belt Mehserle wore that night. He showed jurors that to pull his pistol, Mehserle had to negotiate a pair of "retention devices," rolling forward a hood with his right thumb, then using the same thumb to depress a lever and free the firearm.

"I don't remember doing that," Mehserle said.

After Stein finished, Rains sought again to show jurors his client's grief. He asked Mehserle why he had watched the videos of the shooting only a few times, and Mehserle replied, "It's like reliving the whole thing over and over and over again."

Rains pressed further, asking him if he thought about Grant when he went to sleep at night and when he awoke in the morning. As Mehserle's voice began to crack again, Judge Perry broke in and said, "That's too much, Mr. Rains."

E-mail Demian Bulwa at dbulwa@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle