Testimony continued in the second week of the Pedro Bravo murder trial with expert witnesses giving details about what prosecutors believed happened to Christian Aguilar.
But before testimony resumed Tuesday, the jury asked the judge if there was no verdict by Friday at 5 p.m., would the jurors be allowed to go home. The question of sequestering the jury hadn’t been brought to the attention to the judge before this point.
“If any of you have a concern that your deliberations would be safer, or would need the protection of being sequestered, then write that down for me,” Judge James Colaw instructed the jury.
It’s unknown if any juror responded to Judge Colaw. After that bit of drama, the prosecution resumed its case focusing on forensic evidence. Prosecutors showed maps, graphs, and charts as a way to pinpoint where Bravo and Aguilar were before, during, and after Aguilar’s death using information pulled from cell phone towers.
One detective asserted that a flashlight app was used at a wooded gravesite where Bravo is accused of burying Aguilar.
The forensic testimony came the day after jury watched Bravo in a police interview from 2012 as hundreds were searching for his friend, Christian Aguilar.
After hours of saying he didn’t know what happened to Aguilar, Bravo told detectives that he and Christian had fought before his disappearance.
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“I pushed him out of the car and then I kept punching him out of the car and then, I got out of the car and I kept punching him,” Bravo said in the interrogation tapes. “Then, I continued punching him--it wasn’t savage, but he wasn’t going to get up any time soon. Then, got in my car and left.”
Bravo said in the same interview that he became enraged when Aguilar no longer seemed sympathetic to his talk about suicide. Bravo said he and Aguilar had discussed the topic of suicide many times.
Bravo is accused of strangling Aguilar to death in 2012 and then burying his body in a wooded area outside Gainesville. Prosecutors say Bravo killed Aguilar was obsessed with his former girlfriend Erika Friman who was now dating Aguilar.
Bravo, Aguilar, and Friman all attended Doral Preparatory High School together. Friman was on the witness stand for two days last week.
Police said they found blood in Bravo’s SUV and found Aguilar’s backpack hidden inside a suitcase in Bravo’s closet. Bravo also bought a shovel and roll of duct tape days before the disappearance of Aguilar, according to prosecutors.
Bravo faces seven charges, including homicide, kidnapping, poisoning, making a false report, obstructing a criminal investigation, destroying evidence and mishandling human remains.
