Travion Smith: Victim's scream like from a horror movie
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- Jurors at the Travion Smith murder trial continued watching a critical piece of evidence Tuesday -- video portions of his police interrogation.
Smith is accused along with two other suspects of the murder of Melissa Huggins-Jones, who was found by her 8-year old daughter beaten and stabbed to death at their North Hills apartment in May 2013.
Prosecutors say Smith, Ronald Anthony Jr., and Sarah Redden were breaking into cars just prior to the murder when the two men climbed up to a second-floor balcony and got in to Huggins-Jones' apartment through a sliding door.
Redden allegedly acted as lookout.
During his seven-hour interrogation with Raleigh police detective Eric Gibney, Smith denied being in the apartment, but he said he did hear Huggins-Jones scream and it kept him from sleeping later.
"It just sounded like a horrifying scream like something you would hear in a horror movie," he told Detective Gibney.
But in an opening statement, the prosecution told jurors that it would prove Smith was not only in the apartment with Anthony, but delivered the first blow.
Last September, Anthony pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The plea deal spared him the death penalty.
Redden, who agreed to testify against Smith, was on the witness stand last Thursday. She said while she acted as a lookout, she didn't take part in the murder.
Jurors saw about 80 minutes of the video Monday and Tuesday.
Many times the detective told Smith his co-defendants - in separate interview rooms - were accusing him of the murder.
