A man who said he stayed in the same jail pod as Tremaine Jackson testified Wednesday that Jackson spoke about killing a man.
Daniel Holt said he was detained in South Central Regional Jail with Jackson around October 2016 when Jackson told Holt about his two-year-old son's death. The boy was struck and killed by a car on Charleston's West Side in July 2016.
Jackson said had he not been robbed he would have been there for his son, according to Holt.
Jackson told Holt he kept a gun on him for a few weeks until he saw Bryan Rogers, 29, of Ripley, again. When he did, Holt said Jackson told him he "busted [Rogers'] melon."
On another occasion, Holt said Jackson was irritated at a fellow inmate, and said he had "already taken one [man] out."
Jurors saw more than an hour of footage from Jackson's interview with police following his arrest and heard from Charleston police Detective Canden Sharp, who was present for all of the interview.
Jackson was held in the interview room for more than three hours. At the start of the interview, Jackson denied any knowledge of the crime and repeatedly asked for proof of his involvement. During the interview, officers told Jackson there was video footage of him committing the crime.
However, such footage does not exist. Sharp explained police "use techniques" to maximize information from suspects. He confirmed with prosecutors that those techniques were "basically lying."
Jurors heard from two witnesses that were unsure if the crime was committed by Jackson. Savannah Holt, who is not related to Daniel Holt, was looking out the window of the car as it drove by the crime, said she saw a black man holding a gun.
"Boom and it was over," she said.
Savannah Holt said the man she saw shoot the gun, was "much darker" than Jackson, referring to his skin tone. She said she was sure it was not Jackson who shot the white male, Rogers.
Kanawha County assistant prosecutor Maryclaire Akers asked Savannah Holt why her testimony had changed since she spoke to the court in the August 2016 trial that ended in mistrial.
"The more I get called back in here..." Savannah Holt said. "The more it comes to light what really happened."
Another witness, Chelsea Lively, 20, of Charleston, was in the Rite-Aid parking lot on Dec. 27, 2015. She was smoking a cigarette and talking to her boyfriend on the phone, she said, when she saw Jackson on the sidewalk of Rebecca Street, across from Rite-Aid. She said she knew Jackson through her best friend, who is the mother of one of Jackson's children.
She said she wasn't paying attention to her surroundings, but that when she heard a gunshot, she looked up and was "more than positive" she saw Jackson in the same location he had been in.
The trial will continue at 9:30 a.m. Thursday in Kanawha Circuit Judge Charles King's courtroom in the Kanawha County Judicial Annex Building.
Reach Kayla Asbury at kayla.asbury@wvgazettemail.com, call 304-348-3051 or follow @kasbury_ on Twitter.