For the second day in a row, a former BART Cop has testified that Oscar Grant was NOT a physical threat to any officers when he was shot in the back while lying face down with an officer's knee on the back of his neck.
At the moment Mehserle stood up and fired, Stein asked, "You felt you had control of Mr. Grant?"
"Yes," (Former BART Cop Anthony) Pirone said.
-SF Chronicle
Pirone testified that he didn't feel physically threatened, even though he had punched Grant in the face just a few minutes earlier. When Mehserle asked him to get up off of Grant before the shooting, he wasn't quite sure what the defendant was up to:
Pirone said he thought, "Why am I getting up? I don't understand. Why he is telling me that?"
-Oakland Tribune
Pirone, who has been fired from his job, admitted to yelling a racial epithet at Grant shortly before the murder. He said it was "sarcasm."
The fired former BART Cop also admitted that he has watched endless amounts of video footage in preparation for his testimony, almost insinuating that his handlers are asking him to lie:
Pirone admitted that he has a hard time separating what is in his memory and what he has seen on the various video recordings of the shooting of the 22-year-old Hayward man and the events that led to it.
"It's like trying to unscramble an egg," Pirone said.
-Oakland Tribune
Why would he need to separate or "unscramble" anything if it was all the truth?
