When a man he didn't know pointed a gun at him outside a club, Howie Hamlin said, he thought it was a joke.
He and a friend, Taavon Chambers, had been talking in the parking lot of Woodlawn's Windsor Inn early on July 1, 2007, as the bar was closing for the night. Suddenly, a third man appeared and, brandishing a pistol, ordered them both to lie on the ground, Hamlin testified Tuesday in Baltimore County Circuit Court.
They ignored him. The gunman reacted by shoving the muzzle of his weapon into Hamlin's face, under his left eye.
"Then I knew he was serious, that he was trying to rob us," Hamlin said. "I slapped the gun away."
A shot rang out and a bullet grazed Hamlin across the top of his head, drawing blood. He took off running. An instant later, prosecutors say, the gun went off again and Chambers fell face-down, a fatal bullet wound behind his left ear.
Police later arrested Juvon C. Harris after tracking down the white Lincoln Continental in which a witness saw the shooter flee from the inn on Windsor Mill Road. County dispatchers had also received a call about a man driving erratically in a car of that description, and officers traced the tags to a house in the 3400 block of Piedmont Ave. in Baltimore, where Harris lived.
In the car, officers found a .40-caliber SIG-Sauer SIG Pro pistol. When put through ballistics tests later, bullet casings from the gun were found to match a casing found on Hamlin's car.
Harris was also picked out of a six-man lineup by a woman who was at the bar and who said she saw the gunman flee from the scene.
Now 28, Harris is on trial for first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, attempted robbery with a deadly weapon and other charges. Prosecutors are seeking a death sentence.
On Tuesday, the trial's second day, jurors were shown graphic photographs of both men's wounds. On the stand, Hamlin, 24, appeared to have recovered fully from his head wound, and said the shooting had happened so quickly that he did not get a good look at the assailant and could not describe him.
Asked by defense attorney Gayle Robinson why he initially thought the gunman might have been joking, Hamlin replied that there were other people in the parking lot, suggesting that it seemed odd to try to rob someone in front of witnesses. Besides, he said, "I never been robbed before."
Hamlin was asked to describe the gunman's behavior. "I figured he had to be high on something, 'cause he couldn't stay still," the witness responded.
