Baltimore Officer Gahiji Tshamba, on trial for murder, told a packed courtroom Wednesday that he feared for his life when he shot a Marine veteran a dozen times outside a Mount Vernon nightclub.
"I was scared, I was in fear," Tshamba, 37, said from the witness stand in response to his lawyer's questions. "This man was chasing me."
It was the first time he has spoken publicly about the incident, which began when Tyrone Brown groped a woman's buttocks after a night of drinking. It ended when Tshamba, who was off duty, fired a 12th bullet from his service weapon into Brown about 1:30 a.m. on June 5, 2010, killing him.
There are divergent accounts of what happened between those two points. It's up to Baltimore Circuit Judge Edward R.K. Hargadon, who is hearing the case without a jury, to decide what happened. He asked a series of questions that suggested he was skeptical of Tshamba's version of events, some of which was completely new and clashed with other testimony.
Witnesses during the five-day trial, scheduled to resume Thursday, have contradicted one another on details that include where the men were standing and what they were wearing.
Prosecutors say Tshamba, angry over the groping, aggressively baited Brown and killed him in an act of irrational overreaction.
But Tshamba, a 15-year veteran, said he acted by the book in terms of police work and recounted a vigorous battle with Brown, 32, that no one else appears to have seen. The account was supported by a police expert hired by the defense, Charles J. Key, who said evidence showed that Tshamba acted appropriately.
Prosecutors watching from the audience made snide remarks to one another during testimony, calling Tshamba's story "pure fiction" and joking that Key must have used a "time machine" to make his findings.
Both Tshamba and Brown had been out partying separately with friends — Tshamba at the Chesapeake Wine Company in Canton and Brown at Eden's Lounge in Mount Vernon — before colliding as strangers in an alley behind the Red Maple lounge.
Brown, who was 6-feet-2 and 238 pounds, had a blood-alcohol content of about 0.2 percent, an autopsy would later show — more than twice the legal driving limit.
Tshamba said he had had a single beer, exactly the amount of alcohol police guidelines say an off-duty officer can safely consume, according to Key. Baltimore officers are required to carry their weapons if they're in the city, Key said, unless they're inebriated.
Police officers who saw Tshamba after the incident testified that his eyes appeared "glassy" and he was slurring his speech. Tshamba also refused to take a Breathalyzer test that morning.
Tshamba said he was talking to several women outside Red Maple's back entrance when Brown came up behind one of them — Crystal Ramsey — and "put his hand up under her butt and grabbed it," saying, "'I'm going to take this [expletive] home.'"
Tshamba said Ramsey hit Brown, who raised his hand to hit her back and "physically grabbed her" — a scenario offered by no other witnesses, including Ramsey.
"I immediately told him to let her go [and] identified myself as a police officer," Tshamba said. He withdrew his weapon — which he said was cradled in a department-approved off-duty holster, and not in his waistband, as others have claimed — and a fight began.
Brown hit Tshamba in his left shoulder, said Tshamba, who then retreated, running backward with his eyes and gun still on Brown.
"Mr. Brown continued to come forward," Tshamba said. "He had his hands outreached as if he was trying to take the weapon out of my hands." As Brown got closer, Tshamba said, he fired. Brown reached for the gun, he said, and tried to sweep Tshamba's feet out from under him.
Brown "physically grabbed ahold of me. He grabbed the gun, and he [put] his other hand around my neck," Tshamba said. Meanwhile, the officer kept firing.
"The guy was just way bigger than me. He was overpowering. I believed that he was going to take the weapon [away] from me," Tshamba said.
During cross-examination, Assistant State's Attorney Kevin Wiggins pointed out that Tshamba's story differed from Ramsey's and others. Tshamba said they were wrong.
Wiggins also showed Tshamba a photo taken shortly after the incident. In it, the officer wears a clean white T-shirt — the same one he had on during the incident. His glasses are intact, and he appears unharmed, Wiggins said, with no sign of having been locked in battle.
"Any blood on you?" Wiggins asked. "No sir," replied Tshamba, who was released from the stand after less than an hour. He answered many of Wiggins' questions by saying he wasn't "100 percent sure" how the incident unfolded.
The testimony from Key — a retired Baltimore officer who created the city's training guidelines for the use of deadly force — lasted longer and seemed more certain than Tshamba's. It also drew the most questions from the judge.
