Cellphone video shown jurors captures man's slaying

An iPhone that homicide victim Christopher Mullings' family said he gave his brother days before he died captured evidence that could help put his alleged killer behind bars.

Dwight Leach testified Wednesday that he hit his iPhone's record button as he watched his older brother argue with an acquaintance at a relative's Elmont home in November 2012.

The recording was still rolling when gunshots rang out.

"I said, 'Let me take my phone out and video this,' " Leach, 24, testified Wednesday before jurors saw the recording during Wilfred Labossiere's murder trial.

Labossiere, 33, a mechanic from Far Rockaway, has pleaded not guilty.

His attorney has said he fired his gun after Mullings advanced on him and he feared serious injury or death.

The cellphone video appeared to show Labossiere in an argument and threatening to kill someone, then drawing a gun from his jacket outside the home and shooting a man and a woman by the front door.

Prosecutors say Labossiere fatally shot Mullings, 29, after the two got into a dispute at the home of Leach's godmother, Sandra Clarke.

Authorities said Labossiere also critically wounded Clarke before driving her to a hospital and then fleeing.

The Elmont woman recovered from a gunshot to her abdomen and testified at the trial earlier this week.

She told jurors she'd been trying to keep Labossiere, her grandson's father, apart from Mullings as the dispute between the men escalated.

Testimony showed the argument happened after Labossiere found out his son's mother was paying Leach to baby-sit the 3-year-old boy at the home, apparently without seeing if he could mind his child.

Leach testified that as the two men argued, he heard Labossiere tell Mullings that he would kill him.

The witness said he soon saw Labossiere pull a gun from his jacket pocket and fire.

Leach said his brother was unarmed, with "no gun, no knife, not even a pencil."

The video's broadcast in Nassau County Court in Mineola left some of the victim's loved ones in tears, including Mullings' mother, Patricia Leach, 49, of Roosevelt.

She told Newsday that Mullings was an Army veteran and the father of two girls, including a daughter he never met who was born shortly before he died.

She said Mullings moved to New York months earlier looking for a fresh start, and dreamed of becoming a police officer.

"He never deserved to die like that," she said. "I just want justice to be known. I want justice for my boy."