A relative of the late Jajuan Benavides next to a memorial set up in 2017 after he died on Anson Street in Derby.
ANSONIA-DERBY — On day three of a trial connected to the 2017 killing of Jajuan Benavides, prosecutors showed the jurors part of a music video police said connects the defendant to the killing.
Jacob Freeman, of Ansonia, is accused of chasing down and then fatally shooting Benavides on Anson Street in Derby in the early hours of Aug. 11, 2017. He has pleaded not guilty.
On Thursday (June 20), prosecutors showed the jury about fifty seconds of a music video for the song “Nothin Left” by Kay Montana and Freeman, using the name Jewla. The part shown to the jury includes the video’s introduction, as well as most of a verse performed by Freeman, the lyrics to which were cited in Freeman’s arrest warrant in 2020.
“The video lyrics sung by Jacob Freeman describes a murder on‘A’ and‘Fifth.’ Jajuan Benavides was murdered on the Anson St. and Fifth St. It should be noted Anson Street is known on the street as‘A block,’” the warrant states.
The lyrics cited by the warrant begin at about 1:32 in the video. Click here for a previous story about the video, and click here for all of the Valley Indy’s coverage of the case.
Prosecutors also called the video’s producer, Gavin Holloway of Hamden, to testify about the video’s creation. Their questions focused on the date of the video’s creation – the video was published on YouTube on Sept. 26, 2017, about a month and a half after the shooting.
Holloway said he shot the video at some point in August or September, but that he didn’t know the exact date. He said that he runs a film production business, and that he didn’t know Freeman personally.
Upon cross-examination from Freeman’s lawyer, Walter Hussey, Holloway said that he may have created the video in early August, before the shooting. He said that he wasn’t involved in the writing or production of the music itself and didn’t know when the song was written.
After lunch, prosecutors called Derby Detective Gino DiMauro, who was involved in the police investigation, to the stand to testify about his findings, as well as the contents of the video.
DiMauro said that Anson Street is often referred to as “The A,” and that he had been present on-scene about two hours after Benavides was shot.
He said that he was already familiar with Freeman from past encounters, and that his name had come up in witness interviews the following morning. He said that, while investigating Freeman’s social media use, he had seen an image of Freeman wearing clothing that matched the clothes of the suspect in the shooting.
On cross-examination, Hussey asked DiMauro about the video. He asked whether DiMauro had made efforts to determine when the music and lyrics to the song were written. DiMauro said that he had not.
Expert Witnesses Give Details On Firearms, Cell Phone Data
Earlier in the morning, prosecutors brought in two expert witnesses to testify about physical evidence recovered from the scene, as well as cell phone data connected to Freeman and one other suspect in the shooting.
Jeremy Monkres, a member of the Baltimore Police Department and a former firearms examiner for the State of Connecticut, recounted his findings from the case to the jury.
He reviewed five shell casings recovered from the scene and identified four of them as .45 caliber cartridges, and the last one as a 9mm cartridge. He also showed the jury the gun – a 9mm handgun – that was recovered near Benavides’ body. An eyewitness previously testified that the gun belonged to Benavides.
Monkres said that that gun couldn’t have fired the four .45 caliber cartridges, and that those would have had to have been fired by another weapon.
Monkres also said that the handgun was not jammed when it arrived at his office for review.
On Tuesday, Derby detectives Edward Sullivan and Kevin Duggan testified that the gun was jammed when they recovered it. Prosecutors submitted a photo of the jammed gun into evidence on Monday.
After Monkres, the state called in FBI Agent Kevin Hoyland, a member of the bureau’s Cellular Analysis Survey Team. Hoyland provided a timeline of cell phone data recovered from the phones of Freeman and Rhameir Bush in the hours leading up to the shooting.
Bush is accused of acting as a getaway driver for Freeman and has murder conspiracy charges pending.
According to Hoyland, both Freeman and Bush’s phones were in Bridgeport until about 9 p.m. on Aug. 10, 2017. After that point, Bush’s phone didn’t make or receive any texts or calls for several hours.
At about 12:54 a.m. on Aug. 11, however, Freeman’s phone received nine calls that went directly to voicemail. Hoyland said that that meant Freeman’s phone was either shut off, disconnected from cellular networks, or in airplane mode.
Between 1:04 and 1:25 a.m., Freeman’s phone came back online in Derby, Hoyland said, and there were ten calls to or from that phone in that period. At 1:25 a.m., the phone went offline again.
The warrant used to arrest Freeman said that officers were dispatched to Anson Street in response to the shooting at 1:49 a.m., about 25 minutes after the last activity from Freeman’s phone.
At 2:15 a.m., Bush’s phone came back online in Ansonia, near where Freeman was living. There were 32 texts and calls to and from that phone over the next eight hours, Hoyland said.
In the cross-examination, Hussey focused his questions on the precision of cell phone data. He asked how far the coverage area from a cell phone tower could extend – in other words, how far Freeman and Bush could have been from the places Hoyland’s data said they were.
Hoyland said that he would have needed to do more testing to be certain, but that Freeman and Bush were probably “not more than a block or two” from the locations cited in the data.
What’s Next?
At the end of the day, Judge Eliot D. Prescott gave the jurors a preview of what’s to come in the next few days.
Judge Prescott said he expects the prosecution to call one more witness on Friday (June 21), and that the defense will have a chance to call up witnesses afterward. He said he expects all of the presentation of evidence to be wrapped up by the end of Friday.
Then, the prosecution and defense could give their closing arguments as early as Monday (June 24). That’s shorter than Judge Prescott’s initial forecast of the case, when he said the trial could take up most of next week.
After the closing arguments, the jury will have the chance to deliberate.
