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Ayuso was the last defense witness in his trial on three counts of attempted murder and numerous other charges stemming from the shooting. It occurred in a parking lot near the intersection of Park and Zion streets in Hartford about 1:30 a.m. on June 5, 2003.
Two of the police officers were wounded.
Officer Victor Otero suffered multiple gunshot wounds to his upper leg and lower torso. Part of his small intestine had to be removed in surgery. A single round hit Officer Tishay Johnson's bulletproof vest, causing severe bruising to his lower right rib area. Sgt. Gerald Pleasant avoided physical injury.
The officers had been assigned to an undercover patrol focusing on "quality of life" crimes like auto theft, drug sales, and loitering.
Defense lawyer Jeffrey C. Kestenband said in his final argument Friday afternoon that the officers saw Ayuso standing under a tree on the rainy night and said they suspected he was selling drugs.
The officers pulled into the parking lot. Johnson later told an investigator that Ayuso walked up to the driver's side of the car and asked, "What you need?"
Johnson said he replied, "What you got?"
Johnson testified that Ayuso then said, "You all look like a bunch of jakes," Kestenband told the jury. "Jakes" is street slang for police officers.
The officers say they laughed. But Johnson testified that Ayuso then stuck his head in the car; saw Pleasant, with whom he had had contact in the past; said, "Hell, yeah;" and started shooting, according to the defense lawyer.
Ayuso's version of the incident was substantially different.
He said he had had an altercation on Zion Street the previous morning with a man who had threatened him, saying, "You better keep your burner on you tonight."
"Burner" is a slang expression for a gun.
Ayuso said he subsequently decided to carry a gun that day, even though he knew it was illegal because he has been convicted of felonies.
Between midnight and 1 a.m. on June 5, Ayuso said, he and a friend, Wanda "Yaya" Semprit, smoked marijuana in the doorway of her mother's apartment on Zion Street, near where he had been threatened the previous morning. When he was ready to leave, he said, he volunteered to take out Semprit's garbage and walked toward trash bins at the end of the parking lot.
As he walked back from the trash bins toward his car, he said, he heard a car pull up, its brakes slamming on.
"Some guy in the car rolled down the window and said, 'What's up,'" Ayuso said, later describing the man's tone as aggressive.
He said the man twice asked, "What you got?" and that he replied, in street language, that he had no "junk."
"He started reaching for the door and folding over like this," Ayuso said, bending forward in the witness box.
"First I thought he was going to rob me," Ayuso said. "When he started reaching, I thought he was going to shoot me."
He added a moment later, "That's where people keep their guns, under the seat."
"I just reacted, scared for my life," he said. "I pulled it out and started shooting."
Ayuso said he never said the word, "jakes" during the incident but did use the word "jukes," a slang term for a robbery or robbery victim.
Hartford State's Attorney James Thomas told the jury that, even if Ayuso's version of the incident is correct, his actions don't meet the legal standard for self-defense. In an effort to summarize Ayuso's self-defense claim, the prosecutor wrote on a blackboard, "Aggressive what's up?" and "Furtive gesture."
"If that's all that's required under the law for deadly force, there are a lot more neighborhoods that are going to be dangerous," Thomas said.
Judge Edward J. Mullarkey began his legal instructions to the jury Friday afternoon but didn't finish them before sending the jury home for the weekend.
