Assault victims testify in Mardi Gras trial

As far as Christopher Shirley knew, he had been beaten up by a woman.

It was Fat Tuesday at Pioneer Square last February, and Shirley was there to celebrate.

He doesn't remember what happened to him when he stepped between two women who were fighting. One was pulling the other's hair and kneeing her in the face.

"I simply wanted to separate them and let the girl get out," Shirley testified yesterday in King County Superior Court, where Jerell Thomas is on trial for second-degree murder in the beating death of Kristopher Kime and for allegedly assaulting Shirley and another man.

For Shirley, Mardi Gras began by meeting three friends and going to a Pioneer Square nightclub for drinks and then mingling with the crowd to people-watch.

About 11 p.m., two of his friends left; Shirley stayed to try to find the third friend, who was lost in the crowd.

When he saw a woman attacking another woman, he intervened, allowing the victim to escape.

Then the assailant turned to him. They locked eyes. He touched her shoulder.

"I was trying to soothe her and calm her down. Then she whipped around and swiped at me," Shirley told the jury. "She was definitely angry, and all of a sudden her rage was all about me. She lunged at me. That's the last thing I remember."

Television video of the Feb. 27-28 riots played for the jury showed a man prosecutors say is Thomas, 17, smashing a skateboard into the back of Shirley's head.

The next thing Shirley knew, he was told he needed medical help because he'd been hit by a skateboard. He looked around in disbelief, thinking the reference was to someone else.

Shirley, a 27-year-old Seattle salesman, was taken to Harborview Medical Center. He was stunned when he looked in the mirror to find his face cut, bruised and bleeding.

Having no memory of the assault, he later went to television stations asking for videotape that might fill in the gaps.

Until he viewed the assault on tape, he assumed a girl had beaten him up, he said.

Yesterday, during the second week of the trial before Judge Anthony Wartnik, the other assault victim, Jesse Wilson, also testified.

He was with his wife and two friends when they saw a woman being beaten by a group of other women.

"I remember my wife saying 'somebody ought to help her,' " Wilson testified. "My wife stepped off the curb onto the street." And although he pulled his wife back, the women then turned on her and began hitting her.

"The next thing I know, I get slammed to the ground."

Wilson said he remembers getting hit many times, so many that after a while, he felt only the impact of the blows, not the pain.

He was finally able to free himself, but moments later, he said, he saw Thomas attack the 20-year-old Kime, repeatedly slugging Kime with his fists.

Thomas's attorneys don't deny their client hit Kime. Nor do they deny he hit the other men. But they say he did not hit Kime hard enough to kill him. The Kent man died of head injuries late the night of Feb. 28.

Nancy Bartley can be reached at 206-464-8522 or nbartley@seattletimes.com.