EVERETT — A home surveillance camera likely captured Molly Conley minutes before she was shot to death along a rural Lake Stevens road in 2013.
Prosecutors also allege that same camera recorded Erick Walker driving by minutes later and blocks away from where Molly, 15, was struck by a single bullet and tumbled down a small embankment on S. Lake Stevens Road. The Seattle girl died at the scene.
A Snohomish County jury Thursday watched a video taken from a camera mounted on a house located on S. Davies Road. At least four people are seen walking south on S. Davies Road away from Wyatt Park. Minutes later a car is seen driving northbound toward the park and then making a U-turn and then heading back the way it came.
Molly was shot a few blocks away on S. Lake Stevens Road as she walked with a group of friends. The girls were celebrating Molly’s 15th birthday and staying with one of the girls’ father in Lake Stevens.
The jurors heard from a forensic video analyst who testified that the car seen in the June 1 video is consistent with Walker’s car.
Jurors learned that Snohomish County sheriff’s detectives were allowed to drive Walker’s Pontiac G6 to the scene two months after the homicide. Detectives drove the car by the surveillance camera around the same time of night. Molly was shot just after 11 p.m.
Grant Fredericks, a former police officer and video analyst instructor at the FBI Academy, testified how he compared headlight and brake light shapes and placement on the car seen in the June 1 video to Walker’s vehicle in the police reenactment.
The cars are consistent, Fredericks said.
He also analyzed other vehicles seen on the surveillance camera that night. Fredericks showed jurors how he could distinguish characteristics of headlights and brake lights and whether a vehicle was light-colored or dark.
He also went through a list of vehicles he was asked to compare against the car seen in the June 1 video.
“Every one is different and can be eliminated,” Fredericks said.
On cross examination, he admitted that the quality of the video from the night of Molly’s shooting doesn’t allow for him to clearly identify the group of people seen walking by the house, or who was driving the car. The video doesn’t show the car’s license plate and doesn’t show where it goes after passing the camera.
Walker has admitted that he was in Lake Stevens the night of the shooting. He has denied killing Molly or firing at several houses between Lake Stevens and Marysville hours later.
Jurors on Friday are expected to hear from a team of detectives who recreated the shooting scene. The murder trial is expected to continue for several more days.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463, hefley@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @dianahefley
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