Boston--Relatives of the policeman shot dead after the Boston bombings gave harrowing testimony Wednesday as the defense downplayed a new video of convicted killer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev flipping his middle finger.
The 21-year-old former university student will be sentenced either to death, or to life in prison without parole, by a jury after the second phase of his trial, now under way.
Sean Collier, 27, was campus police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the most prestigious universities in the country, when the Tsarnaev brothers shot him dead on the night of April 18, 2013.
"It's been a terrible two years," step father Joseph Rogers, 58, told court. He married Collier's mother more than 20 years ago, and the blended family grew up together, six children in all.
One woman on the jury cried as Rogers told of the phone call announcing that Sean had been shot and the rush to the hospital.
"All the children showed up," he said. Rogers and his wife saw Sean's bloodied body in a hospital room. "He had a hole in the middle of the head, he was shot to pieces."
Tsarnaev, dressed in a brown blazer and white shirt, refused to look at Rogers, maintaining the impervious expression that he has adopted since his federal trial began in early March.
"There is somebody missing. Thanksgiving and Christmas will never be the same," said Rogers.
"It is still a huge loss for me and my family for the rest of our lives," Sean's younger brother Andrew Collier told the court.
AFP
