“We need help!”
The videotaped voice rang out repeatedly in Courtroom 304 at the Criminal Justice Center Thursday.
Twelve jurors — eight women and four men — and a courtroom packed with press and observers watched in silence as two grainy cell-phone videos played over and over, depicting a melee at the corner 16th and Chancellor streets on Sept. 11, 2014.
Zachary Hesse watched the footage from the witness stand, using a laser pointer to pick out a blonde woman in a white dress who he said physically and verbally assaulted him. He pointed to defendant Kathryn Knott when Assistant District Attorney Mike Barry asked him to identify the woman in court.
Knott, 25, is charge with two counts of aggravated assault, simple assault, conspiracy and reckless endangerment. Her co-defendants, Kevin Harrigan and Philip Williams, accepted plea deals this fall and will serve no jail time for their role in the incident.
Knott only spoke to plead not guilty at the beginning of Thursday’s proceeding; she sat silently with her attorney, Louis Busico, and did not react throughout the day’s testimony, though some of the eight family members and supporters in the rows behind her were visibly agitated when Barry pressed Hesse to identify Knott in the videos.
Hesse testified for about an hour-and-a-half Thursday afternoon, with the last half-hour being cross-examined by Busico.
Hesse, 29, told jurors that he and boyfriend Andrew Haught had just gotten frozen yogurt with Hesse’s family and were heading to get pizza at Broad and Locust streets when they heard a man — whom Barry and Busico both stipulated was Harrigan — say, “What is that, your fucking boyfriend?”
“I never had anyone speak to me like that before. I was in shock,” Hesse testified. “Who would be doing this in the middle of Philadelphia?”
Hesse, visibly shaken, said he replied, “So what if it is?” prompting Harrigan, surrounded by about a dozen friends, to call him a “dirty fucking faggot.”
“Never in my life” had he been called that, Hesse said.
Hesse testified that he said, “Maybe I am a dirty fucking faggot,” as he and Harrigan approached one another. He said Harrigan shoved him, he shoved Harrigan back and Harrigan then punched him.
“It got messy. People were screaming, yelling, punches were thrown,” he said.
On cross-examination, Busico repeatedly emphasized that the situation was chaotic. However, Barry countered and had Hesse confirm that, while some details of the melee were muddled, he clearly recalled Knott entering the fray and punching him in the face.
Haught is expected to open testimony on Friday. Judge Roxanne Covington told jurors she wanted them to hear the testimony in full, so she recessed early for the day on Thursday.
Opening statements
“You dirty fucking faggot.”
Assistant District Attorney Allison Ruth didn’t mince words as she began her opening statement. She used the slur repeatedly throughout her presentation, walking the jurors, seven of whom are people of color and five of whom are white, through the events from the point of view of Haught and Hesse.
“It didn’t stop with the humiliation,” she said about the antigay language. “The comments started coming and coming. Then the punches started coming. Zach and Andrew will tell you [Knott] was out there. She was making comments. She was throwing punches,” Ruth said, pointing to Knott and urging jurors to not believe defense suggestions that the incident was a mutual fight.
“Fifteen on two. There’s nothing mutual about that,” Ruth said.
“Seven people called 911. And not one of them was the defendant or her friends,” she added. “When the lights and sirens were coming, she was walking away. And to add insult to injury, she went to a bar and kept drinking.”
Ruth detailed the victims’ injuries, noting that Haught suffered the brunt of the assault.
“These were broken,” she said, pointing to her facial bones. “His bones were detached from his skull, floating in his face.”
Haught needed 14 screws to rejoin his jawbone to his face, she said. He had his jaw wired shut for eight weeks.
“It was like having a medieval-torture device in his mouth,” she said.
Busico delivered his opening next, repeatedly returning to the theme that the blame lay with Harrigan and Williams, not Knott.
“It was those two men that did this. This was nothing she agreed to, nothing she anticipated, nothing she wanted to do. Merely being present where other people are committing crimes is not a crime,” Busico said. “She is not their babysitter. She is not their keeper.”
Busico contended that after Harrigan and Hesse got into it, Haught struck another female, not Knott, promoting Williams to attack.
“Four adult men got into it. One of them hits a girl. One of the men then hits that man,” Busico said.
Busico also said Knott did not use antigay language during the incident.
“The faggot language, the fuck yous? She didn’t do it,” Busico said, banging on the desk where Knott was sitting.
Busico added he will be calling several character witnesses who will testify that Knott is a “peaceful and non-violent individual.”
Prosecution witnesses
The prosecution’s first witness was Officer Steven Berardi, assigned to the Crime Scene Unit.
The eight-year veteran detailed the photographs he took of the intersections involved in the incident. On cross-examination, Busico suggested the nine-day gap between the incident and Berardi’s surveillance of the scene could have compromised the integrity of the evidence collected.
Jeffrey Nagle testified next. He witnessed the incident from his third-floor apartment that overlooked 16th and Chancellor streets. He has since moved to Florida.
Nagle said he heard commotion outside and went to the window, from where he saw one man holding another in a headlock — presumably Hesse and Harrigan — surrounded by a crowd. About an arm’s length away was another man, with a woman pointing in his face — presumably Haught and Knott. He said that man knocked the woman’s hand away.
Barry asked Nagle to demonstrate that action, and he illustrated the pushing of a forearm. Barry emphasized that the man did not punch or strike the woman, which Nagle agreed with.
Nagle said a man in the crowd then “bum-rushed” the man who pushed the woman’s arm, knocking him back 15-20 feet and onto the ground. Nagle said he could hear multiple punches through his window.
“He looked motionless as he hit the ground,” he testified. “It was drastic enough for me to call 911. I was worried about the guy not moving.”
Nagle said he saw eight to 10 individuals walking away from the scene and spotted two or three women who approached the victim with paper towels to wipe his face, noting there were pools of blood on the ground. Nagle called authorities and went down to the scene, where he stayed with Haught and Hesse until an ambulance arrived.
On cross-examination, Nagle acknowledged that he couldn’t tell if the antigay language and cursing he heard came from a man or a woman.
“And the only punches you saw were by a guy on a guy, correct?” Busico questioned, which Nagle confirmed.
On re-direct examination, Nagle added that he did not see all elements of the incidents and may have missed other interactions.
Fire Department paramedic Kimberly Facenda took the stand next.
Facenda said it took her team about seven minutes to arrive on the scene after they were dispatched.
She said she visualized that Haught’s jaw was broken.
“He had a lot of facial injuries. He had a dislocated jaw,” Facenda testified. “His lip was cut all the way through, and he had a black eye.”
Facenda said Haught told her “multiple people” punched him several times. She said he also told her he was called a faggot before the attack.
Next on the stand was eyewitness Rachel Mondesir. She and two friends had been out for drinks that night, she said, and were waiting for a bus with the one friend at 16th and Walnut when they heard a commotion nearby. They went to investigate and saw “a lot of people tussling” by Chancellor Street, Mondesir testified.
Mondesir said she saw a female in a white dress, whom she described as a brunette, punch a man in a blue shirt — Hesse was wearing a blue shirt the night of the incident — prompting a verbal reaction from the crowd.
“It was a big deal because it was a female hitting a guy,” she said. “That’s not an everyday thing.”
After the other man — presumably Haught — “went down and was out cold” the crowd started to disperse, and Mondesir, a certified nursing assistant, and her friends went to help.
“He was bleeding pretty badly,” she testified. “He looked like he couldn’t talk. We used towels to clean his face up but it was beyond what I could do, so we waited for the paramedics.”
Hesse was the last witness of the day.
He testified that, after the initial encounter with Harrigan, he was surrounded by the group, had his arms pinned to his side and was punched about five times. He said he saw Knott approach with an open hand and he closed his eyes as she struck him.
“She was screaming ‘fucking faggot’ in my face and swinging at me,” he testified.
The video clips that were shown in court only caught pieces of the interactions. One showed a female in a white dress running toward a group; another showed a female in a white dress standing next to a man who appeared to be Hesse.
Barry showed multiple photos of Hesse’s and Haught’s injuries and also admitted into evidence the bloodied clothes the couple was wearing the night of the incident.
On cross-examination, there was a lengthy exchange between Hesse and Busico in which Busico noted that Hesse’s statement to police a few days after the incident indicated that he believed Harrigan was the “main” person involved and gave him a black eye. Hesse repeatedly testified he was unsure who was who, or which punch caused the black eye.
During re-direct, Hesse noted that Knott’s involvement was one of the first things he told detectives about.
“I was appalled. I couldn’t believe a girl would get involved in a fight like that,” he said. “She was rude, calling me a faggot. She stuck out for sure.”