It was last call at RJ’s, and Cordaryl Silva was buying.
He hurried through the packed bar and ordered two beers along with three gin and juices.
He downed one of the cocktails and passed out drinks to friends.
He walked toward the entrance and saw a car drive into the parking lot.
Inside the vehicle was Javon Zimmerman, who within minutes would lie dead on the pavement outside.
Silva, the man on trial for his murder, told the jury weighing evidence in the case Friday that he didn’t do it — but he refused to name the person who he said actually pulled the trigger.
For more than an hour Friday, Silva answered questions from his lawyer, Lawrence Hopkins, in an effort to dispute three days worth of evidence a prosecutor and police mounted against him, including eyewitness statements and alleged confessions he made while in custody.
The prosecutor in the case, Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Charles Stango, then tore into Silva’s account, pacing back and forth across the courtroom while pointing out inconsistencies with his prior statements to police and arguing Silva’s story made no sense.
Closing arguments in the case are scheduled for Tuesday, after which the jury will begin deliberations.
Click here for a story about the first day of testimony at the trial.
Click here for a story about the second day of testimony.
Click here to a story about the third day of testimony.
‘What Happened Happened, And I Took Off’
Silva told the jury Friday that on the night of Zimmerman’s killing outside RJ’s bar on Derby Elizabeth Street, he had decided to go to there with a cousin.
They arrived about 11:30 p.m. May 11, 2012, he said. The place was packed.
He said he talked to Monea Howard, the first witness called in the trial.
She was the first of several people who testified that they had become aware of a dispute between Silva and the Zimmerman crew — an alleged group of organized and violent drug dealers in the lower Valley.
Howard testified Tuesday that Silva told her a member of the Zimmerman crew was “going to get it.”
Not so, Silva testified Friday. “I never said that at all.”
About two hours after arriving at the bar, Silva said, it was nearly closing time.
He bought drinks at last call, then said he walked out of the bar and saw a car pull in.
Tyquan Bailey, an acquaintance of Silva’s he knew to be connected to Zimmerman, got out.
Though Silva had run-ins with the crew, he and Bailey had a rapport. They assured each other they were just there to chill, he said.
Silva then mentioned “my other boy,” whose identity remains a mystery.
“My other boy comes walking up. Then Javon jumps out the car,” Silva testified.
“Why you talking to these bitch-ass niggas?” Zimmerman yelled at Bailey, according to Silva’s story.
“My boy went over to basically tell him chill out, it ain’t even like that, we just chilling, everybody’s chilling,” Silva testified. “He kept running his mouth, that’s when what happened happened. And I took off.”
Who Is ‘My Boy’?
He testified that the person he referred to only as “my boy” shot Zimmerman — but wouldn’t be more specific.
During Silva’s testimony Hopkins tried several times to get Silva to say who that person is.
“I don’t really want to say,” Silva told the lawyer.
“I think it’s rather important that you do,” Hopkins replied.
“I would rather not though,” Silva said. “If I state his name on the record, what’s that going to do? The only thing that’s going to do is go to the papers.”
He said the person is “one of the only people that really have my back to keep my family safe.”
He went on to concede to being the person Derby Police Officer John Dorosh saw running away from the scene immediately after the shooting.
He said he ran from the scene because he has a “history” with the Derby police, and Dorosh himself, saying the officer had lied days earlier when he testified he didn’t know Zimmerman.
“He’s arrested me,” Silva said.
Silva had a better relationship with Kristen Hunt and Matthew Macero, cops in the Ansonia police department’s anti-crime unit who had spent months trying to build a case against the Zimmerman crew at the time of the shooting.
Silva was an informant in the investigation, and spoke to the two twice in the days after Zimmerman’s killing. Recordings of the conversations were played for the jury Thursday.
Silva said Friday the cops “manipulated” him, saying they took advantage of the fact that he was high on marijuana at the time of their last talk, three days after the shooting.
He also accused the cops of pausing the recording during certain parts of the conversation to make him sound more culpable.
“The picture they’re trying to paint is bogus, but if you don’t pay attention, it’s believable,” he told the jury.
He went on to deny confessing to the killing while behind bars, and said that Facebook posts cited in by the prosecution as evidence of escalating malice toward Zimmerman were just “cryptic” messages he authored about wanting to get away from the Valley drug dealing scene.
He downplayed his dispute with the Zimmermans, as well, saying he had “issues” with them, but “it never came to guns or nothing.”
Cross-Examination To Bear
Stango, the prosecutor, was incredulous.
“Mr. Silva, we heard three hours of interviews where you basically called the Zimmerman clan every name under the book,” he said while questioning Silva. “Are you telling the ladies and gentlmen of the jury now you did not have a beef with them?”
“Not enough to see any one of them dead,” Silva replied.
Standing directly in front of the jury, Stango stretched his arm to a television screen on which they had watched and listened to Silva’s interviews with police in the days after the killing.
The prosecutor asked Silva to explain “the three hours of interviews here, where you chronicle your beef with the Zimmerman clan, and how they get away with everything, and how they have all the money, and all the connects, and all the informants, and they have the lawyers, and they get away with shit, and they shouldn’t get away with shit and what happened to Javon, now they know what it’s like?”
“I’m just going off,” Silva said. “I’m just talking. Just blabbering.”
Stango pointed out that, according to Silva’s account, he ran toward the spot the shots were fired from, not in the opposite direction.
He also asked about a portion of the talk where Silva talked with cops about the possible prison sentences he could receive.
They brought it up, Silva told the prosecutor.
“I was just telling her what she wanted to hear,” Silva said.
Stango mocked Silva’s story of a mystery shooter, saying Silva was refusing to name the person “because if you gave the name, police, maybe they investigate and somebody gets charged unfairly, isn’t that true?
“No,” Silva said.
“It’s safer to not give a name,” Stango said. “And it’s convenient. ‘I didn’t do it, that guy did it. I’m not going to say who it was.’ Nice and neat. Case over.”
“You would rather sit here and point the finger at someone else, not name a name, and take your chances with three eyewitnesses, two people who say you confessed to them, Officer Dorosh saying he saw you running from the scene, and the fact that you’re caught in about 16 different lies about how you ran from the scene?” the prosecutor went on.
Silva admitted he had lied to police before, but stuck by his story.
“Today’s the first time you have told the story about the other shooter … to anybody who could help you with this,” Stango said.
“They can’t help me,” Silva said “What can they help me with?”
“Correct,” Stango shot back. “No further questions.”
