After the hearing, journalists who attended the hearing reported that before Fields drove into the crowd, he backed his car up about a block. For example, The Washington Post reported:
Fields' Dodge approached ... from behind at a moderate speed. It then backed up, traveling more than a block, before accelerating at a rapid clip.
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| Image is from a SonofNewo video |
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| My annotation of a MapQuest screenshot |
The hearing comprised mostly the testimony of the case agent, Detective Steven Young. The hearing transcript has become available on a Scrbd webpage. Nowhere in the transcript does Young say that Fields backed his car up before he drove into the crowd.
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I summarize Young's testimony as follows.
Young's findings are based mostly on:
* Police body-camera videos of people at the intersection of Fourth Street and Water Street
* Police body-camera videos of people at the intersection of Fourth Street and Market Street
* The video from a surveillance camera mounted on the Red Pump Kitchen, a restaurant located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Fourth Street and Main Street.
* The video from a police helicopter.
After Fields drove into the crowd at the intersection of Fourth and Water, he backed up to the intersection of Fourth and Market. Then Fields drove east on Market Street to Ninth Street, where he turned right.
A police officer wearing a body camera (or more than one such officer) came to the intersection of Fourth and Market and interviewed people there. The people there said that the car had turned right on Ninth Street and so was headed toward Monticello Avenue (a main street to the south).
The police officer sent a radio message about the car's getaway route. A few minutes later, Fields was caught a couple blocks south of Monticello -- near the intersection of Avon Street and Blenheim Street.
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The police officer wearing the body camera questioned further the people at the intersection Fourth and Market. They remembered that arrived at the intersection from Market Street and then turned south on Fourth Street. Fields drove slowly south toward Main Street and then backed up, returning toward the intersection. Then Fields resumed driving south on Fourth and stopped and idled near the Main Street crossover.
Young testified:
Many witnesses I spoke to noticed a gray Dodge Challenger slowly drive on Fourth Street from Market Street towards Water Street at a slow pace. At one point it was idling near the [Main Street] crossover on Fourth Street, and this is confirmed through video.All this happened in the area between Market Street and Main Street.
One witness I spoke to actually commented that the Dodge Challenger was an unfortunate driver is stopped here on the downtown mall but good thing there’s no one at the intersection of Fourth and Market and that the Dodge can simply back up and leave the area.
Several witnesses claim and confirm through video that no one was at the intersection near Fourth and Market. There were some people but no crowds whatsoever at Fourth and Market, which is where the Dodge Challenger came from.
Many witnesses saw the Challenger back up towards Market Street, thinking that the Challenger would just simply get back onto Market and leave the area.
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Then Fields resumed driving south, crossed Main Street, and stopped and idled his car south of the Main Street crossover. He idled his car in an area that was not seen by the surveillance camera of the Red Pump Kitchen (RPK).
Young testified that the RPK camera showed the following sequence of events.
13:48:40 -- maroon van drives south past RPKThe above times are what the RPK clock showed, but the clock was about 13 minutes fast. When that 13-minute discrepancy is corrected, the sequence of events is:
13:51:55 -- black truck drives south past RPK
13:52:50 -- white Camry drives south past RPK
13:52:56 -- Fields' car drives south past RPK.
13:35:40 -- maroon van drives south past RPKThen, according to Young, Fields' car was not seen for 1:10 minutes. During that interval, Fields' car idled near the Main Street crosswalk and then drove into the crowd and then backed up until it returned into the view of the RPK camera.
13:38:55 -- black truck drives south past RPK
13:39:50 -- white Camry drives south past RPK
13:39:56 -- Fields' car drives south past RPK.
Fields' car returned into the RPK camera's view at 13:54:06 according to that camera's clock. When the 13-minute discrepancy is corrected, the time is 13:41:06.
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So, Fields' car idled in this area -- close to the crosswalk but out of the RPK camera's view.
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| The red circle is where Fields idled his car. |
After idling his car there, Fields drove south into the crowd and then drove back north, past the RPK camera, and further back to Market Street.
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Young testified that Fields' idling his car near the crossover was confirmed by video (transcript page 20, line 17). The video that confirmed that idling cannot be the RPK camera, because the car was out of that camera's view for 1:10 minutes.
The video camera that confirmed that Fields idled his car near the crosswalk is someone else's video camera.
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After the pretrial hearing, someone told the journalists that Fields' car backed up a distance that was something like the distance of a city block. If Fields' car actually had backed up such a long distance, then it backed up from 1) somewhere between Main and Water to 2) somewhere between Main and Market.
However, the backup happened entirely in the area between Main and Market, and it happened before Fields crossed Main Street and idled south of Main Street.
In fact, Fields idled his car near where Gilmore was standing in the middle of Fourth Street, and from that proximity Fields drove south into the crowd.
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For more clarification, read my next article, titled The Pretrial Hearing Did Not Show a Video of James Fields' First Backup.
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