This is a running account of the fourth day of testimony in the Justin Ross Harris murder case, which resumed today after Hurricane Matthew forced the court to recess for two days. Harris is charged with murder in the death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper, by leaving him in his SUV for hours on a hot June day in 2014. For a linear chronology, start with the last item (9:45) first.
10:11 a.m.
Audio feed still unreliable. Our reporters in the courtroom text that the feed is supposed to be fixed during the court’s midmorning break.
Defense attorney Maddox Kilgore is going over an aerial image with the witness, Kyle Weston, showing the location of the Chick-fil-A, the roadways Harris used and other nearby businesses.
10 a.m.
A second video, from a different angle, captures the same scene. Harris is holding Cooper with his right arm and then shifts the toddler to his left so he can retrieve his wallet to pay for his food. He then moves out of the frame, still carrying his son.
The witness returns to the stand.
She shows him a still image of an exterior view showing how the defendant would have driven out of the Chick-fil-A parking lot and then made a U-turn onto Cumberland Parkway. (From there, Harris drove up to a traffic light. He should have turned left to take Cooper to a daycare a short distance away. Instead, he went straight and drove into the parking lot at the Treehouse, an office building where Harris worked for Home Depot.)
Weston says he was first interviewed by police at the restaurant concerning Harris’s visit.
9:45 a.m.
Judge Mary Staley Clark brings in the jury at 9:30 a.m., and Day 5 is underway. Kyle Weston, former assistant manager of the Vinings Chick-fil-A restaurant, is on the stand. This is the restaurant at which Harris and his son had breakfast minutes before Harris left the little boy in his car in the parking lot at his office. The witness says he now works for Chick-fil-A Inc. in Utah. Assistant District Attorney Susan Treadaway is conducting the direct examination. She runs him through the cameras at the Vinings store’s counter and the drive-through.
She puts a DVD into the large-screen rig in the courtroom and invites the witness to step down to join her in front of the screen. The first image is still — a view of the front counter of the restaurant. (The audio feed is fading in and out.)
The audio feed has largely broken down, so the prosecutor’s questions and the witness’s responses are mostly inaudible. The video on the screen shows Ross Harris at the counter, holding Cooper. He orders and then pulls out his wallet and hands over a credit card. He then carries Cooper away, apparently to the dining room.
