Tramaine Miller testified Tuesday he first saw Atlanta Police Officer Reginald Fisher when he woke up in a hospital room two years ago with a bullet lodged in his neck.
The officer was on TV in a news story about Miller's shooting.. All Miller said he remembered was getting in his car, hearing someone scream profanities at him and ordering him to raise his hands. Then a gunshot ran out.
"It all happened so fast," Miller said.
Fisher, 42, is on trial this week in Fulton County Superior Court on charges including aggravated assault and conduct unbecoming an officer, which could put him in prison for more than 20 years. He has been suspended from the APD since shortly after the shooting on May 5, 2009.
Fisher, who first shattered the car window with his baton, had confronted Miller because he parked in handicap parking space. When Miller held his hands up as ordered, holding a cellphone in his his left, he said, a gun fired.
The evening had started peacefully. Miller, then 27, was on his day off from the Mrs. Winner' s Chicken & Biscuits restaurant where he worked as a cook. He and his girlfriend, who worked for the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, had gone out for a "couple of beers" after she got off work.
They were back home at their house in Mechanicsville shortly before 9 p.m. and ordered pizza when Miller got a phone call from his aunt. A quadriplegicwho lived in the City Views apartments near Turner Field, his aunt asked him to come over to help her take her medication.
Miller, who didn't have a driver's license, drove his girlfriend's car the short distance to the apartment complex where Fisher was working an off-duty job as a security guard. Miller said he wasn't drunk.
Miller quickly helped his aunt and when he left the building, he saw his neighbor, Jack Jordan, dozing outside. "I said, ‘Wake up old man,"‘ Miller said. "He said, ‘Get on, young buck."‘
He said he got into his girlfriend's Dodge Charger, put on his seat belt and put the car in reverse when he heard Fisher's commands.
"My hands were up and they stayed up," he said. "My phone was in my hand."
The bullet struck him in the face, leaving him with brain and nerve damage. The bullet remains in his neck. Removing it would risk paralysis, Miller testified. He said he had held jobs since high school but the pain and injuries from the attack have left him unable to work.
He has filed a lawsuit against the City of Atlanta and the apartment complex.
"I have to live," he testified.
Fisher's defense lawyers, J. Tom Morgan and Michael Ruppersburg, contend the shooting was an accident, not a crime. They say that it happened because Miller didn't follow Fisher's commands and the officer mistook the cellphone for a gun.
Fisher had yelled at Miller to warn him about parking in the handicap spot. But Miller ignored him and tried to drive off, only to stop when Fisher pulled his gun, the defense lawyers said.
Fisher shot when Miller reached under his seat for a cellphone during the fast-moving exchange, said Morgan, the former district attorney for DeKalb County.
Vonetta Guffie, who lived in the apartments, didn't see it that way. She said Fisher approached Miller's car aggressively, pulling his gun, cursing him and giving him conflicting commands to raise his hands and then to roll down his window.
"Tramaine had his hands up and his cell phone was in his hands," Guffie testified. "All of the sudden, pow. We couldn't believe he shot this man in front of us. It didn't make no sense."
Jordan, who also testified Tuesday, said that he was "positive" that Miller didn't have anything in his hand when he was first seated in the car. He had said after the shooting, however, he saw Miller holding a cellphone, which supported the defense version of events.
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