Jury sent home for weekend after deliberation in trial of ex-Arlington police officer

After deliberating for about three hours in the criminally negligent homicide trial of a man who while working as an Arlington police officer shot to death a woman outdoors when he intended to fire upon her charging dog, a jury was sent home Friday night without reaching a verdict.

Jurors in the Ravinder Singh trial began considering the case about 5:15 p.m. and soon sent a note to the judge that requested access to several exhibits, including Singh’s body-worn camera recording of the shooting, his statement to a detective investigating the case and an aerial photo of the scene. Judge Ryan Hill, who presides in 371st District Court in Tarrant County, granted the request for those materials and others that had been admitted into evidence.

The jury will resume its deliberation on Monday.

As the defense concluded its case earlier in the day, jurors heard that the second of three bullets that Singh fired from his handgun spiraled as normal when it left the muzzle.

But when the projectile grazed the running dog, the round began to tumble, and its path diverted to a concrete sidewalk, then veered sharply, through Margarita Brooks’ forearm and into her chest, a policing and forensics expert testified on Friday for the defense.

The bullet, Ron Martinelli said, ricocheted twice before it killed Brooks in the late afternoon on Aug. 1, 2019. Brooks was lying on a blanket on grass next to a sidewalk in Arlington, and Singh was looking for her because a man had reported she was unconscious. The dog belonged to Brooks and was with her when Singh called to her.

The chances of the bullet taking the path it did in the Brooks case are incalculable, Martinelli testified, because they are so small. The route was a “complete anomaly,” he said.

“She got struck with a double ricochet round in my professional opinion,” Martinelli said of Brooks, who was 30 years old.

The shooting, Martinelli testified, was proper in part because other options, using a baton, Taser or pepper spray, would not have been effective, and Brooks was not directly behind the dog when Singh fired.

“The officer, in my opinion, did what he needed to do,” Martinelli testified.

Martinelli, a former San Jose police officer who operates a forensics consulting business, described his assessment during testimony on Thursday and Friday.

When asked outside the presence of the jury, Singh told Hill he had decided not to testify.

In their closing arguments, defense attorneys Kathy Lowthorp and Rafael Sierra recounted their theory that Singh arrived at the scene with a sincere intent to help someone and did not expect to encounter an unleashed dog with powerful jaws.

When he fired upon the dog, Singh experienced tunnel vision, a phenomenon in which a person’s brain is, under stress, exclusively focused on an immediate, grave threat, the defense argued.

“This is a fluke. This is an accident. Accidents happen,” Lowthorp said.

In the last argument the panel heard from either side, prosecutor Tim Rodgers asked jurors to recall their first thoughts when they viewed Singh’s body-worn video recording of the shooting and to discount the defense experts’ measurements on distance, speed, angle and trajectory that Rodgers suggested may have been calculated with flawed assumptions.

“Not one of those shots should’ve been taken. Much less two. Much less three,” he said.

Later, Rodgers offered a verbal twist on the defense assertion that Brooks’ death was the result of a tragic accident.

“It is a tragedy,” he said. “But it’s not an accident.”

Earlier in the day, on cross examination by Rodgers, Martinelli testified his firm was hired by the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas to investigate the Singh case and it was to be paid about $38,000 for its work. The firm’s experts charge $350 an hour.

At its fastest, the dog moved at 17.9 mph, testified Angelos Leiloglou, an expert on photogrammetry, which involves taking measurements from photographs. It covered 26 1/2 feet per second, Martinelli testified.

The Martinelli testimony appeared to be intended to counter an assessment from prosecutors’ policing witness, Jonathyn Priest, who testified it was his opinion that Singh took a substantial and unjustified risk that someone would be killed when he fired at the dog.

Based on images recorded by the body-worn camera, Singh’s focus appeared to be the dog, not Brooks, Priest said.

“She’s forgotten here?” Rodgers asked of Brooks.

“Very much so,” Priest answered.

Priest worked as a Denver Police Department officer for 32 years. Now retired, Priest is a consultant on police use of force and an instructor on law enforcement matters.

Police officers using firearms are trained to be certain of their target and what lies beyond, Priest testified.

Singh’s primary failure was firing when he knew Brooks was in the background, Priest said. The shooting was neither reasonable nor necessary under those circumstances, he testified.

The shooting was a gross deviation from the standard of care and presented a substantial and unjustified risk to Brooks, Priest testified.

A professional dog trainer testified that from his view of Singh’s body-worn camera recording, the dog was a pit bull determined to injure Singh or a paramedic who was behind him.

“I saw a dog committed to attacking somebody,” Whitt Brooks, a defense witness, testified.

Singh’s body-worn camera recording was played several times for jurors. The video shows Singh spotting Margarita Brooks in the distance and yelling questions. Her dog began to bark and run in Singh’s direction.

Singh, who is 28, resigned from the police department on Nov. 1, 2019, three months after Margarita Brooks’ death. If he is found guilty, Singh faces a maximum of two years in jail and a $10,000 fine.