Twenty shots, in rapid succession. Like they were fired from a semi-automatic weapon.
That’s what 28-year-old Karshawn Batie told a jury he heard.
Carl Batie
He testified Wednesday before a packed courtroom, on the opening day of the murder trial of Maurice Skillman and Hykeem Tucker, two Trenton men charged with the November 11, 2012 murder of Mercer County corrections officer Carl Batie.
A bullet struck Carl Batie in the head – it entered about two inches up from his eye – while he was standing on a packed balcony at the Baldassari Regency banquet hall in Chambersburg.
Karshawn Batie, a Burlington County corrections officer and the victim’s brother, said he and Carl attended a re-election party for President Barack Obama. Karshawn recalled his brother shelled out the cover fee for both of them to get in.
“It was his treat,” he said.
They were inseparable all night.
“Even when I went to the bathroom,” he said before a crowded courtroom, many of them corrections officers who came to support the Batie family. “Wherever he went, I went.”
Until the shots rang out.
As it got closer to 1 a.m., Karshawn and Carl stepped out on the balcony, where about 40 people were gathered, to get fresh air.
Karshawn recalled his brother talked to a security officer while he sat a few feet away.
It was the first time they had been separated. And that’s when gunfire erupted, sending patrons dashing for cover.
“Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop,” Karshawn said.
A woman tugged at him and told him to get down. He covered himself up.
When the shots stopped, Karshawn stood up and searched the crowd for any sign of Carl.
“The first thing you notice is the person you came with,” he said. “I looked. I didn’t see him.”
He finally saw him, sprawled face up on the floor of the balcony, and rushed to his side.
“His eyes were watering,” Karshawn said. “He was looking straight up. I started screaming and hollering, ‘That’s my brother. That’s my brother.”
Karshawn implored his brother to stay with him.
“Just hold on,” he told him. “Help is coming.”
He knew better.
“I kept thinking, ‘He’s not gonna live,” he said.
People told Karshawn to call his mother to let her know what happened. He worried how she would react.
“How do you tell your mother something like this?” Karshawn said.
Karshawn said on cross examination neither he nor his brother knew Skillman or Tucker, a critical fact defense attorneys plan to hold out as proof their clients did not have a motive to kill the corrections officer.
Karshawn’s testimony came on the heels of an opening statement from Christopher Campbell, Tucker’s attorney. He told jurors to “second-guess” every witness’ testimony.
If they do, they’ll arrive at a not guilty verdict, he said, and they’ll know in their “quietest moments that justice was done, and they helped get it there.”
Nicole Carlo, Skillman’s attorney, said her client’s story paralleled the Batie brothers.
Maurice and his twin brother Marquis were also at the banquet hall to have a good time.
“What ended up happening is he ended up wrongfully accused,” she said.
She said Trenton Police arrested and interrogated another individual the night of the murder.
But feeling heat to solve the case and after investigators watched surveillance tapes capturing the chaos of the early-morning murder, Carlo said police’s perceptions shifted toward her client.
The evidence they collected, however, does not shift guilt toward Maurice Skillman, she said.
“What are they collecting that connects Maurice Skillman” to the murder, Carlo asked. “The video is what leads us to today, to Maurice sitting here wrongfully accused.”
Prosecutors played for jurors a video they say captures the suspects at the banquet hall around the time of the shooting. Defense attorneys said it is not demonstrative of their involvement.
Assistant Prosecutor Heather Hadley said the tape is one piece of evidence in a “puzzle that fits together.”
“We won’t know the why,” she said. “But the who is right there; it’s right there in that video.”