Day 4: Prosecutors continue case against APD Officer Christopher Taylor

Editor's note: The video above is KXAN's coverage during day 3 of trial on Wednesday.

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- The state will continue to bring witnesses Thursday in the trial of Austin Police Officer Christopher Taylor, who was charged with murder in the death of Mike Ramos.

Taylor shot and killed Ramos, 42, during a confrontation with police back in April 2020 at a south Austin apartment complex parking lot. Taylor is on administrative leave with APD.

KXAN's Grace Reader will be in court Thursday and will share live coverage on social media platform X:

Previous coverage of this trial:

• APD officers testify in fellow officer’s murder trial
• ‘I would take that back’: Woman who called 911 testifies in APD officer’s murder trial
• Witness video shown in first day of APD officer murder case
• Opening statements wrap up in murder trial involving APD officer
• Jury selected in APD officer’s murder trial
• Judge grants mistrial motion in APD officer murder case

Previous day: Testimony from APD officers on scene

Wednesday, the state put APD patrol officer Darrell Cantu-Harkless, James Morgan and now-Detective Benjamin Hart on the stand. All were officers who responded to the scene with Taylor.

Cantu-Harkless was the first to testify. He told the jury the call came out as a drug call and then was upgraded to a "gun urgent call," meaning someone who has a gun but isn't necessarily threatening anyone with it, he testified.

Cantu-Harkless said officers staged before they approached Ramos because they knew of previous offenses involving his vehicle. He said officers treated their interaction with Ramos as a high-risk traffic stop.

The jury watched Cantu-Harkless' body camera video before mid-day, which showed officers planning their approach to Ramos and then their interaction with him until shots were fired by Taylor.

In the afternoon, the jury heard from Detective Benjamin Hart, also on the scene. He served as the lead officer at the time because he had the most experience, he testified.

Hart described being on the same specialized unit as Taylor, called the RISE unit, which has been discussed heavily during this trial. It was designed to address crime in the Riverside area. The jury also watched his body camera video and the body camera video of the officer standing behind Hart.

The most tense moments in the courtroom Wednesday were between prosecutors and Hart as the state pushed Hart to clearly tell the jury that Ramos did not drive toward officers, but instead turned away from them.

Hart initially said he believed the vehicle may have come toward him and the other officers because Ramos was trapped and only had the options to "go around" or "go through," but later said -- after much back and forth between him and the prosecution -- that it appeared to veer to it's right, away from officers.

The jury also saw Taylor's body camera video Wednesday as part of Hart's testimony. The prosecutors did not initially show the moments in the video where Taylor fired shots at Ramos.

Officer Morgan also took the stand Wednesday and the jury watched significant chunks of his body camera footage before the end of the day. That's where the jury will begin Thursday morning.

New witness video

A woman who lives in the apartment complex where Ramos was shot and killed by Taylor was one of the first witnesses Wednesday. She took a video from her bedroom of the initial interaction between Ramos and police, which the jury watched.

The state only showed a few seconds of the clip, and the woman had a thick screen over her window, which made it difficult to see much in the video.

Jennifer De La Garza told the jury she filmed from her third-story bedroom, which faced the incident until an officer hit Ramos with a bean bag round. She said after that, she got scared and stopped recording but continued to watch the incident unfold.

"They pulled him [Ramos] out [of the car], and then they put him down on the ground, handcuffed him and put him in a grass area and then put him in the paramedics and drove out with no lights or anything," she said.

De La Garza told the jury that after Austin Police Officers came to get her video -- it disappeared from her phone.