Officer says victim in Lori Daybell murder trial was on the floor when shot

PHOENIX (CN) — On the fourth day of the murder trial of “Doomsday Mom” Lori Vallow Daybell, a first responder said it’s likely that the victim was shot while lying on his back, potentially snuffing out the defendant’s self-defense claim.

Police responded to Vallow Daybell’s home in Chandler, Arizona, on July 11, 2019, to find her ex-husband Charles Vallow dead with two bullet wounds in his chest and abdomen. Though Vallow Daybell says that her now-deceased brother Alex Cox shot Vallow in self-defense, prosecutors chalk the incident up to another intentional killing in a larger web of murders surrounding the defendant and her husband, religious fanatic Chad Daybell, who spun tales of demonic possession, reincarnation and the apocalypse.

They say Vallow Daybell and her husband used their cultish religious beliefs to justify killing her ex-husband and later Chad Daybell’s wife and Vallow Daybell’s two children, Joshua and Tylee.

In a Phoenix courtroom Wednesday morning, former Chandler Police Detective Daniel Coons said the evidence he observed at the crime scene suggests that Vallow was already on the ground when he was shot for the second time.

The first bullet traveled directly through the victim’s chest and into the baseboard on the wall behind him, Coons told the jury. The second bullet entered through his abdomen but exited under his left shoulder, creating an indentation in the hardwood floor beneath him.

“The shooter was a bit away from the body, but the body was firmly on the floor at the time of the shot,” Coons said.

He also attended Vallow’s autopsy, he said, in which medical examiners used trajectory rods to corroborate the path of the bullets.

In her opening statement, Vallow Daybell said her brother shot Vallow after he attacked her and her son Tylee with a baseball bat recovered at the crime scene. Cox told police at the time that Vallow struck him on the head with the bat, but Coons said he observed no blood or other biological evidence anywhere on the bat.

Coons spent most of the afternoon on the stand, flipping through crime scene photos, almost all of which displayed Vallow’s body. After just a few minutes, Vallow’s mother walked briskly out of the courtroom with a scowl on her face. Her cries could be heard from beyond the door.

Representing herself, Vallow Daybell struggled through her cross-examination of Coons, maintaining a casual, conversational tone but facing multiple objections to the form and content of her questions.

She challenged Coons’ suggestion that Cox may have taken a few steps before shooting Vallow a second time.

“Is it common for someone to shoot someone, take a few steps, then shoot again?” she asked.

Maricopa County Deputy Prosecutor Treena Kay objected, calling the question irrelevant and speculative.

“In your experience, as a firearms expert who shoots a lot of guns,” the defendant qualified.

Kay objected a second time, and Maricopa County Judge Justin Beresky agreed.

Earlier, she took an interest in the concept of left-handed guns, commenting that she had never considered that a left-handed person may need one.

“I guess if you’re left-handed, you’d want that,” she said with a slight giggle.

The defendant didn’t get to the crux of Coons’ testimony before the day came to a close. After dismissing the jury, Beresky warned the defendant to stop commenting on witness testimony and keep her questions straight to the point.

In the morning, Chandler firefighters told the now-14-person jury that they doubted whether anyone did CPR on the victim before they arrived because his sternum hadn’t yet been cracked, which they said should happen if one does chest compressions hard enough.

On cross-examination, Vallow Daybell asked whether it was possible that someone tried CPR but didn’t do it correctly, apparently trying to demonstrate that she and Cox cared enough about the victim to try to resuscitate him. Witnesses said they didn’t know for sure.

The originally 16-person jury had already been cut down to 14, two members having been dismissed yesterday for personal conflicts. Two more were nearly dismissed Tuesday morning.

One juror recognized body cam footage shown to the jury on Monday as part of a YouTube video he watched in the past. He didn’t remember details of the video, though, so Beresky kept him on. After the lunch break, Kay complained that a different juror was on his phone during testimony, right before he submitted a question to the witness. The juror assured Beresky that he was only texting his daughter and promised to stay off his phone for the rest of the six-week trial.

Vallow Daybell will continue to cross-examine Coons on Wednesday morning. The defendant’s other brother, Adam Cox, is expected to testify on Thursday.

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