DADE CITY, Fla. — The trial of Curtis Reeves continued Monday with his defense team calling his wife Vivian to the stand.
Defense attorneys walked Vivian through the chain of events that led up to Reeves shooting Chad Oulson in a theater. As Vivian Reeves described the events of that day, she said she wanted to get away from the scene that was unfolding.
Vivian Reeves said just before her husband went to tell a manager that Oulson was on his phone in the theater, she told him, "Let's just move."
However, Vivian said they didn't choose to move because their son was coming and they had already told him where they were sitting. She described her husband at the time as not being mad or mumbling.
Reeves said she was "terrified" when Oulson stood up and turned around to face her husband in the theater. Vivian Reeves said she did not see her husband get hit with anything or get punched, nor did she hear him say "No, no, no" or "whoa, whoa, whoa."
Outside of Vivian Reeves' testimony Monday, the defense attorneys spent much of the day questioning expert witnesses in fields including geriatrics, forensics, and physics, among other areas.
The defense team was questioning Bruce Koenig as testimony was halted for the day before 5 p.m. Koenig was walking the jury through videos and pictures provided by the defense team.
The trial is expected to get underway again Tuesday and could be a long day as the judge in the case asked jurors to be ready to stay later in the evening.
The biggest question remaining in the trial is whether Curtis Reeves will take the stand in his own defense this week. ABC Action News legal analyst Jeffrey Swartz explained a defendant who's claiming self-defense has to sell self-defense himself.
"He can create circumstances, he can put witnesses on that support his position, but he’s the one that’s going to have to show that he was afraid for his life and that it was reasonable for him to use deadly force," said Swartz. "It’s only up to him. Everything else surrounding him just supports that.”
