As Baltimore County police officer Dominic Rizzo stood over a toddler who had just been dragged beneath a truck for nearly two miles, he knew the child was still alive ? and suffering.
“It appeared to me that his chest was breathing,” Rizzo testified Wednesday in Baltimore County Circuit Court on the third day of the vehicular manslaughter trial of Lazara Arellano de Hogue, 41. “It was rising and falling in rapid succession. As I moved, his eyes continued to follow in my direction. His eyes were tracking me.”
Despite having been dragged beneath Arellano de Hogue?s red pickup truck in Towson ? ripping his body apart ? Elijah Cozart, 3, was somehow still alive, Rizzo said.
“His left foot was up by his head,” the officer said.
As Rizzo testified, members of Elijah?s family and their friends ? including parents Kevin and Marsha Cozart ? appeared openly upset to hear of their son?s suffering.
In the hall of the Towson courthouse, Arellano de Hogue?s attorney, Ricardo Zwaig, who has been exchanging hostile barbs with prosecutor Allan Webster in court, later attempted to sympathize with the family.
“I?m really sorry,” Zwaig told Elijah?s parents. “This case has affected me like no other. I just have to do what I have to do.”
“So you specifically have to do this?” Kevin Cozart replied. “Nobody has to do that.”
Arellano de Hogue admitted to police she was in a hurry to get home on Dec. 1, 2006 when her pickup slammed into Marjorie Thomas and a stroller holding her grandson. Thomas, 55, was injured but survived.
Arellano de Hogue?s passenger testified Wednesday that she heard no sound as Elijah was dragged.
Kenai Santos, 22, said Arellano de Hogue stopped the car and removed from the right front wheel the stroller, placing it on the side of the road.
“I was afraid something had happened,” Santos said.
