oseph Brutto bought his girlfriend Mindy Acosta some candy to ease the symptoms of her drug withdrawal.
She seemed fidgety and in pain, he told jurors Wednesday.
A short time later, he gave her $40 to buy them both some heroin or cocaine, he said.
He said he watched as Acosta, 30, walked away from his West 18th Street home toward Liberty Street the evening of Nov. 3, 2005.
It was the last time he would see her alive, he said.
In the early morning hours of Nov. 4, 2005, across the state line in Ashtabula, Ohio, Jeffrey Norris came home and woke his girlfriend up. He seemed intoxicated and upset, she testified Wednesday. As they sat in their darkened living room, the girlfriend testified, Norris told her he had been in a fight.
She said she saw drops of blood on his white tennis shoes. A week later, Norris told her the fight had been with a woman and the woman was dead.
She did not believe him, she said. "I could not picture him doing something like that," she said.
Jurors listened Wednesday as prosecutors presented the evidence they say proves Norris, 32, sexually assaulted, beat and killed Acosta on Nov. 4, 2005, in a baseball field in the 100 block of Pennsylvania Avenue.
The trial is expected to continue today in Judge Shad Connelly's courtroom.
Norris faces charges of homicide, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, rape and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
First Assistant District Attorney Robert A. Sambroak Jr. and Assistant District Attorney Carrie Munsee are seeking a first-degree murder conviction, arguing that Norris intentionally killed Acosta. She died after someone squeezed her throat and covered her mouth for four to six minutes, Dr. Eric Vey, Erie County forensic pathologist, testified Wednesday.
Norris' lawyer, John Moore, told jurors in his opening statement that there is "more to the story." Evidence, including Norris' DNA on Acosta's body, only shows that Norris had sex with Acosta, not that he killed her, Moore said.
In his questioning of witnesses, he asked repeatedly whether there were others that Acosta feared, including drug dealers.
Prosecutors are making the case against Norris, in part, with testimony from his mother, Doris Mulligan.
Norris, a former Erie Coke Corp. employee, had not surfaced as a suspect in the investigation until September 2010 when Mulligan called police, Detective James Stumpo testified.
Mulligan said her son seemed to be suicidal. He had called her and said only "Mindy Acosta" before hanging up.
Police arrested Norris in October 2010 after they obtained a sample of Norris' DNA, which matched fluid found on Acosta's body.
Investigators also recorded prison phone conversations between Mulligan and Norris in which Norris told his mother he had bought a condom with Acosta and then had sex with Acosta in the ball field the night she died. He said the spot was 150 yards away from where Acosta's body was found.
A woman walking her dog in McCarty Memorial Park at East Second Street and Pennsylvania Avenue found Acosta dead the morning of Nov. 4, 2005.
Police told the jury Wednesday that Acosta lay near the fence in right field, wearing only ankle socks. A condom wrapper and condom lay near her body.
The soles of the socks were stained with juice from the pokeweed berries that grew around the field, Vey said.
There were tire tracks from a vehicle in the parking lot, where two other condoms were located.
Vey said Acosta had been both strangled and smothered. Before she died, he said, the 30-year-old mother of two suffered a beating and sexual encounter that left scrapes and bruises on her body and large contusions from blunt force trauma spread across each side of her face, he said.
Her nose, left cheek bone and jaw were broken. A shoe print was pressed into her forehead, Vey said.
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