CHARLOTTE — Jurors in a Mecklenburg County courtroom on Friday saw the moment CMPD’s SWAT unit arrested Terry Conner, who is one of two men charged with killing NoDa sandwich shop owner Scott Brooks.
“Stop right there. Turn around for me, Terry. Let me see your backside,” said Officer Brian Walsh, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.
Channel 9’s Hunter Sáenz explains what happened in the moments after the arrest.
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The arrest was made roughly three months after Brooks was killed.
Conner and Steven Staples are accused of robbing and shooting Brooks on Dec. 9, 2019, as he was preparing to open Brooks’ Sandwich Shop in NoDa.
In the following days during the investigation leading to an arrest, Walsh’s body camera captured the moments SWAT performed room-to-room sweeps inside a townhome when they noticed something unusual in the primary bedroom closet.
“The scuddle hole on the ceiling had been disturbed and then I started looking around and saw there was fresh insulation on the clothes that were on the top shelf of the closet,” Walsh testified in court.
Officers found a handgun, a green ammo box, rifle and magazines in the attic. The jury saw all of it in person in the courtroom.
Walsh told the jury he remembered Conner having insulation from the attic on him when arrested.
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Conner’s defense wondered how the officer concluded it was insulation on his client.
“You didn’t test the substance,” said defense attorney Kenneth Snow.
“I don’t do any testing,” Walsh said.
“Alright, so you don’t know,” Snow said.
“I don’t know,” Walsh replied.
“You don’t know,” Snow said. “Thank you.”
Conner’s then-girlfriend took the stand. She lived in the townhome and was there when Conner was arrested.
The woman, who Channel 9 is not identifying, told jurors the hole in the ceiling wasn’t there before Conner’s arrest.
She also had never seen the guns.
The woman told the jury the only way they could have been put there was by Conner, himself.
Conner’s then-girlfriend also testified that the two started dating in October of 2019, and he used the same cellphone to correspond with her.
That cellphone was used until Dec. 9, 2019, which was when Brooks was killed.
That afternoon, he texted her from another number saying it was his new one.
That text came hours after Brooks was killed.
Jurors also got to see what was found inside Conner’s car.
A crime scene investigator found multiple rolls of unopened duct tape, binoculars, a ski mask, and black beanie.
Conner and Staples scoped out the area before they targeted Brooks, prosecutors said. The suspects wore ski masks during the crime.
Both suspects are also charged in a double homicide where the victims were bound by duct tape.
VIDEO: Prosecutors try to link DNA found at crime scene to suspects
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