WATCH: Fellow officer, witness in car with defendant testify about shooting of Burleson cop
Burleson police Lt. Charles Garrett was on his meal break eating a sandwich, drinking a Big Gulp and listening to late night talk radio in the early morning hours of April 14, 2021. It was a quiet night. Until Officer Joshua Lott screamed out on the police radio. He’d been shot.
That’s what Garrett told jurors Tuesday morning, in the second day of the capital murder trial of Jerry Don Elders.
“You’re sitting there eating a peanut butter sandwich in the quiet and the next minute an officer is screaming over the radio that he’s been shot,” Garrett told jurors.
Elders is accused of shooting Lott during a traffic stop, then fleeing the scene and eventually kidnapping 60-year-old Robin Waddell, stealing her pickup truck then killing her.
Elders faces the death penalty or life in prison without parole if the jury finds him guilty of capital murder.
Lott survived the shooting. That may have been, at least in part, because of another officer who was first to show up after Lott cried out over the radio. That officer loaded Lott into his vehicle and took him to the hospital, Garrett told jurors.
Lott pulled Elders over around 4:15 a.m. on April 14, 2021, because of a defective light, Burleson police said at the time. As the officer approached the vehicle on the passenger side, Elders is accused of shooting him through the passenger window.
Lott was shot three times.
Jeremy Brewer told jurors Tuesday that the gunshots were deafening.
Brewer was in the car with Elders when the shooting happened, according to police. He testified Tuesday that he didn’t hear Elders say anything after the shooting, but that he probably wouldn’t have been able to hear him even if he did.
Elders hit the gas after shooting Lott and fled until the car caught fire and went off the road, Brewer told the jury. When that happened, he, Elders and a woman who was in the car with them all got out and ran in different directions. Brewer ran into the woods, crossing through creeks and eventually hiding behind a small building near one creek.
Brewer hid there for a while, he said. About 15 minutes after he left his hiding place, he was arrested on drug charges that were filed that same day. He ended up pleading guilty to lesser charges under a plea deal in which he said he would testify in Elders’ trial if he were called as a witness.
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Garrett told jurors he saw Lott’s police vehicle when he arrived at the scene of the shooting, along with a puddle of blood, Lott’s duty handgun, a single shell casing that matched Burleson police standard-issue ammunition for the handgun and his flashlight on the ground, still turned on. They checked Lott’s police vehicle computer and found that he’d run the license plate of a car before he was shot. That vehicle was registered to Elders.
Police put out an order to search for the car.
Garrett marked the evidence and then was sent to the scene of a vehicle fire when a captain arrived, he said. He didn’t yet know that vehicle fire was connected to the shooting of Lott, but his “Spidey senses were tingling,” Garrett said, and he suspected it was somehow connected.
When he arrived, the vehicle had been pulled back onto the road by a wrecker driver who wanted to prevent the fire from spreading to the grass or trees, Garrett testified. There were tote bags and a luggage bag on the side of the road, pulled out of the vehicle by someone who saw it burning and went to make sure it was unoccupied.
After the fire was extinguished, Garrett said, he was able to instruct another officer to run the VIN and see if the vehicle was the same one that Lott had pulled over before he was shot. It was.
Garrett said officers then searched the car and the bags that were pulled out of it, looking for anything they could use to identify people who may have been in the car.
Elders’ attorney questioned Garrett on the permission he had to search the burned vehicle and the bags, seemingly trying to establish grounds for the evidence to be thrown out. The lieutenant said the property was abandoned and there were exigent circumstances.
Jurors on Tuesday afternoon heard from investigators and officers who responded to the scene, learning that police set up a perimeter around the area where the burning vehicle was abandoned and stopped cars. Officers also searched tubs that were in the vehicle, finding documents including tax forms, a Social Security card and a W-2, all of which had Elders’ name on them.
A mini courtroom drama unfolded outside the presence of the jury over that evidence. The defense objected, claiming the search of the bins in which the documents were found was unconstitutional. The prosecution argued in its rebuttal that the car and the bins were abandoned when the driver and passengers fled.
Visiting Judge Lee Gabriel sided with the prosecution in the end.
More objections and even a motion for mistrial came after the jury heard about the bin and its contents.
Sgt. Ron Martin was a detective in 2021 when Lott was shot. In response to one question about how events unfolded in the investigation, Martin told the jury he spoke with other law enforcement officers to see if they knew about Elders from any previous cases. The defense objected before he could say whether Elders had been involved in prior cases or not, something the judge said saved the prosecution from a mistrial.
“I don’t want to say you were on the brink of disaster, but you were very close to creating problems that don’t need to be created,” the judge told prosecutors.
The jury was instructed to disregard Martin’s statement about conferring with other police and the motion for a mistrial was denied.
Jurors also saw videos from officers’ body cameras and from a restaurant outside the Joshua police station. The video from the restaurant showed the pickup truck that authorities say Elders stole from Waddell crash through the back gate of the department’s parking lot. While it can’t be seen in the video, police said that’s where Elders dumped Waddell’s body.
The trial in Johnson County’s 413th District Court could last two weeks or longer. If Elders is found guilty, the trial will enter a second phase for the jury to determine his punishment.
This story was originally published April 16, 2024 at 1:51 PM.