GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Jurors were shown six minutes of surveillance video from different angles of the Marathon gas station where a 48-year-old clerk was shot and killed last May.
Nearly ten months after Shannon Rozanski-Schoen was fatally shot during a Wyoming gas station robbery, trial is underway for Willie Bryant, the 34-year-old accused in her death. Kent County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Monica Janiskee told jurors in her opening statement Tuesday that witness testimony would align with surveillance video of the murder.
Multiplex video captured at the Marathon station at 28th Street and Buchanan Avenue SW shows the gunman walking from a white Cadillac into the store once before returning to the vehicle.
"Willie says 'I've got nothing to lose,'" Janiskee told jurors, based on testimony from the accused getaway driver, Gary Bryant, 59.
The gunman can be seen entering the store a second time to buy a bottle of water. Rozanski-Schoen looks up to see a gun pointed at her, and shuts the register drawer just as she is shot in the arm. The gunman then rushes toward the store's owner, who testified anonymously in court, before returning to the counter and shooting Rozanski-Schoen once more.
"This is a situation where it comes down to 'who did it' and you're going to see these individual pieces and you're going to have to fit them together," said defense attorney Michael Anderson during his opening statement. "You're going to have to complete this puzzle and say 'do I have enough?'"
Anderson said it will be up to jurors to decide if Willie Bryant is the gunman shown in the video.
The elder Bryant pleaded guilty to a lesser charge last year in exchange for his testimony. He is expected to testify Wednesday.
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