Schoolyard Shooting Victim Cried Out for Her Brother

The lone survivor of the Newark schoolyard murders case from the summer of 2007 thought only of her brother as she lay near death, according to testimony revealed today.

Police officer Darnell Graham, the first responder at the grisly scene, testified Wednesday that he thought all four victims lying behind the Mt. Vernon school were dead.

Then he heard one of the two young women on the ground murmur, "Where is my brother?"
  
The brother the victim called for was 18-year-old Terrance Aeriel, who didn't make it.

A few minutes after Aeriel's sister spoke those words, the first paramedics arrived. Like Graham, Derron Brice, a Gulf War Corpsman veteran, also thought all four were dead. Then his partner found "a feint pulse, shallow respiration" on Aeriel's sister.

She, like the other three, had also been shot in the back of the head. But because she had also been sexually assaulted, NBC New York is not revealing her identity. The prosecution says the 19-year-old woman was also cut with a knife.
    
Originally scheduled to tell her story on the first day of the trial, the sole survivor's testimony has been moved to Thursday.

Earlier in trial, the paramedic who arrived on the scene after police first got there also heard the survivor utter something similar.

Derron Brice testified, "I remember her saying get her brother."

Wednesday marked the second day of the first trial stemming from the execution-style slayings of the three friends in Newark.

Earlier today, a man who called 911 after hearing gunshots and screaming testified. Michael Yancey said as he was using the bathroom, he heard a female's voice outside the window.
    
"'Don’t do that, please,'" he quoted her as saying. He said he then heard her say, "Why do you want to do that?"
    
Yancey described her as "begging for mercy."
    
Then he heard her again, in what he described as a "harsher voice."
   
"Don't do that, why you want to do that?" he quoted her as saying.
   
"A couple minutes later, that's when I heard gunshots. Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom," he told the jury in a staccatto that lasted maybe two seconds.
    
Yancey said he then callled 911, and when police arrived, a few minutes later, they found all four had been shot execution-style, a single bullet to the back of the head of each of them. Also today, the prosecution presented crime-scene photos of the victims taken by one of the first paramedics to arrive at the scene.