Homophobe Shooter Cross Examines BFF of Dead Gay Man in Court
A man who witnessed the fatal shooting of his best friend on a Greenwich Village street had to endure a hostile cross-examination Tuesday by the accused killer, who is representing himself at his murder trial.
Defendant Elliot Morales bizarrely tried to blame murder victim Mark Carson, 32, and his pal Danny Robinson, 34, for provoking the attack.
“You could have avoided all of this from escalating to the level it did, if you and Mr. Carson just went along with your own business?” asked Morales, 36, who had hurled anti-gay slurs at the strangers as they walked down Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village May 18, 2013.
“That is so offensive,” Robinson said, shaking his head as prosecutors objected.
“Sustained,” declared Justice Kirke Bartley.
After a drunken Morales snarled at the flamboyant strangers, “What are you, gay wrestlers?” and called them “f—gots,” the men turned around and confronted him, according to prosecutors.
The tense interaction was caught on surveillance video outside a pizza shop, but there is no audio.
Morales then walked around the corner onto Eight Street. The two men followed and exchanged more words when Morales whipped out his Taurus .38-caliber gun and shot Carson in the face.
“Wouldn’t you agree, seeing this firearm and telling me to put it down, wouldn’t you consider that to be more instigating the whole situation?” Morales questioned Robinson.
“Instigating?” asked Robinson, incredulously. “Not at all.”
“You could have kept going?” asked Morales, wearing glasses and a gray cardigan.
“Yeah, we could have easily kept going while we see a guy standing there with a gun,” Robinson said incredulously. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Watch surveillance video of the confrontation between Mark Carson (in shorts and black tank top) and Elliot Morales (gray sweatshirt on left):
Morales then played the 911 call where a blast can be clearly heard in the background, then Robinson saying, “Some guy just shot my friend!”
“I didn’t hear it,” Morales said in court of the gunshot, cueing the tape again. “Point it out to me.”
Robinson bowed his head and muttered, “Oh my God” before complying.
Morales then tried to suggest that he only pulled the trigger when Robinson reached into his pocket for his phone.
“Is it possible what happened was a reaction to the threat that was put on my own life?” the defendant asked. “[When] you reached into your pocket and removed what I believed was a black gun at the time.”
As Robinson exited the courtroom, he wiped tears from his eyes.
Morales’ anti-gay rant started hours earlier when he urinated on the front window of the eatery Annisa, according to testimony from the restaurant’s general manager Michael Cherry.
“I asked them to move away,” Cherry said. “He (Morales) said, ‘You wanna get a look at my tiny d—k?”
Cherry walked away but moments later Morales entered the restaurant calling the staff “f–gots” and threatening the bartender with a gun.
“He was saying, ‘He had a gun, he had a gun,’’ Cherry said of the bartender. “He was beside himself with fright.”
Morales, who is charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime and other raps, insisted in his opening remark that he’s not a bigot. But ADA Shannon Lucey told jurors that Morales killed Carson for no other reason than that he was gay.
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