Texas Car Wash Slay Trial Begins
D A L L A S, Sept. 25 -- A car wash worker told a jury today that hearrived at work last March to find six co-workers lying in bloodypuddles in a lobby and an office, with Robert Wayne Harris standingnearby.
Five of those co-workers were dead or dying.
“They were all lying, face down I believe, in a pool ofblood,” said Jason Shields, 21, of the scene when he entered thecar wash lobby. “They were still trying to breathe.”
Shields, who broke down in sobs at the sight of crime scenephotos, was a key witness prosecutors called in Harris’ capitalmurder trial. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the28-year-old defendant, who had been fired from the car wash a fewdays before the killings.
Bad VibesWith three bloody bodies in thelobby of the Mi-T-Fine Car Wash in Irving on March 20, Shields said he looked atHarris, who told him he thought the business had been robbed.
Shields told the state district court jury that Harris directedhim to three more bodies in the office. Harris then reached for aknife on a bookshelf, Shields said.
“I got a vibe, ‘I’d better get out of here before somethinghappens to me,’ “ Shields said.
Harris, 28, has been charged in the five deaths at the Mi-T-FineCar Wash in Irving and the unrelated slaying of an Irving womanseveral months earlier. However, prosecutors are trying Harris onlyin the slayings of cashier Rhoda Wheeler, 45, and assistant managerAugustin Villasenor, 36.
Killing more than one person in the same crime allows capitalmurder charges, and prosecutors said they will seek the deathpenalty.
Lost ‘Sense of Being’ or Greed?Harris, who has confessed to police, his brother and at leastone television reporter, pleaded innocent at the start of the trialtoday.
Detective Jeff Spivey testified that Harris gave two statementsto police when he was arrested the day after the slayings. In thefirst, he said he walked into the car wash and found the carnage.He later gave another statement saying he killed the six after hewas assaulted by Villasenor.
