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After more than three days of testimony from witnesses for the prosecution, attorneys for Darius Birk were able to mount their defense against his attempted murder charge.
Attorneys Andrew Baldwin and Carrie Miles called a firearms safety expert, as well as Birk’s best friend and mother, Friday in Johnson County Superior Court 2.
Birk, a Greenwood man, is charged with attempted murder in the shooting of his then-girlfriend, as well as aggravated battery, pointing a firearm at another and carrying a handgun without a license.
Birk and the victim were riding together in a van on Park Drive in Greenwood on March 13, 2021, when the shooting occurred, according to the probable cause affidavit. The victim, who was driving the van, was shot once in the face, resulting in extensive facial damage that she is still recovering from today.
Sheila Birk, Birk’s mother, described what she was doing the day of the shooting. She talked about how her son came over earlier in the day, and she told him she was going to lunch. While on that lunch, she turned off her phone, missing a call from her son around 1:30 p.m.
“I tried to call him back, because he didn’t send a text message afterwards, and doesn’t normally call,” she said.
In her testimony, Sheila Birk said she continued to try to reach her son, calling and sending texts. She also tried to reach the victim, as they had been close prior to the incident.
Finally, she reached Darius Birk, and described what she heard as wind and howling noise.
“I could hear panic,” she said.
Suspecting something was seriously wrong, Sheila Birk drove from the Broad Ripple area in Indianapolis to the first hospital she could find — Community Hospital South, she said. Reaching the hospital, she saw police with their lights flashing.
“I got out of the car. Obviously I was very concerned and worried. I see my son in handcuffs, leaning against a light pole,” she said.
On cross-examination, deputy prosecutor Kayla Keller questioned if Sheila Birk really did just drive to the first hospital she came across, happening to find her son, or if Darius Birk had told her where to go. Sheila Birk reiterated she did not know.
Keller also dug into the call log from Darius Birk’s phone, contradicting some of the testimony Sheila Birk had given.
The defense also called Darius Birk’s best friend, Kyle Smith, to testify in the case.
Smith described how he learned about the shooting, and talked about going to the victim’s home the day of the shooting and encountering her father. He was adamant he did not talk to Darius Birk after the shooting, despite what the victim had testified to hearing while being driven to the hospital.
Baldwin asked Smith if police ever asked to see or examine his phone, and he said they did not. When asked if he’d be willing to let police see it if asked, he said he would.
The defense’s first witness was David Lombardo, a firearms safety expert and founder of Safer USA, a shooting school and firearms training company. He testified about how firearms are manufactured so that as you go to grab it, your finger automatically goes to the trigger.
Lombardo teaches students to hold their fingers out of the way, which feels unnatural to most, he said. The reason is to prevent accidental shootings.
The single biggest cause of misfired guns is people improperly putting their fingers on the trigger, he said.
Miles focused on Darius Birk’s unsafe handling of guns, laying out a scenario about what may happen if two people were in a vehicle, one of them an untrained firearms user holding a Glock handgun, and the driver of the vehicle slammed on the brakes.
“If they were arguing, the physiological aspect of it, I’d be surprised if (the gun) didn’t go off,” Lombardo said.
Earlier in the day, the prosecution finished up its case. They called a pair of surgeons to testify to the victim’s injuries and the extensive damage that had been done to her jaw.
Dr. Lindsey Mossler, a trauma surgeon at Eskenazi Health in Indianapolis, described the victim’s condition when she arrived at the hospital on March 13, 2021, after being transferred from Community Hospital South.
“She was awake. She was unable to speak because she had a severe injury to her face, with a lot of blood and droop coming out,” Mossler said.
The jury saw photographs and CT scans of the victim taken following the shooting, including ones showing fragments of metal from the bullet still in her skull. The victim’s jaw was being held in place by only skin and soft tissue, she said.
“It was essentially destroyed,” Mossler said.
Dr. Ivan Hadad, a plastic surgeon for Eskenazi Health, removed the bullet from the victim’s jaw, and testified Friday that it appeared the bullet had gone in the right side of her face before lodging in her left jaw. He also walked the jury through the surgeries and procedures that had been done to reconstruct the victim’s jaw.
Her jaw will never be as strong or operate the same way as it had before the shooting, Hadad said.
With the prosecution and defense finished making their cases, both will give their closing arguments on Monday morning, before the jury begins deliberation.
