Cop: Had Grant cooperated, he would be alive

(05-27) 17:00 PDT OAKLAND -- A colleague of the former BART police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man early New Year's Day testified Wednesday that the victim would still be alive if he and his friends had cooperated with police. "If they would have followed orders, this wouldn't have happened," said Officer Marysol Domenici at a preliminary hearing in Oakland for former Officer Johannes Mehserle, who is charged with murder. Domenici and Mehserle were among seven BART officers who responded to Oakland's Fruitvale Station at about 2 a.m. in response to reports of a fight aboard a Dublin-Pleasanton train. Five young men, including 22-year-old Oscar Grant of Hayward, were detained. Domenici and other BART officers testifying for the defense have described Grant and the others as belligerent. Domenici said Wednesday that if the men had followed police instructions and cooperated, "they probably would have just been cited (arrested on suspicion of a misdemeanor) and released." Attorneys for Mehserle, 27, say he meant to fire his Taser stun gun rather than his pistol as he and another officer were trying to handcuff Grant for allegedly resisting arrest. Grant was killed by a single shot to the back. Domenici, who has been on the BART force for four years, was called by defense attorneys to talk about what she described as a chaotic situation on the train platform. She said she had no regrets about her actions that night. Domenici said she had not seen Mehserle shoot Grant because she had been facing the other direction. Immediately after the shot was fired, she said, some train riders were so angry that she started thinking about using her gun. "I said to myself, 'Oh, Jesus Christ, if I have to, I'm going to have to kill somebody,' " Domenici said. But she also said she had never pushed an emergency button on her police radio that would have allowed her to call for backup. CONTINUE READING..