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Prosecutors in the trial of Jeremy Christian are asking that the jury in his murder trial be allowed to tour the inside of the MAX train car where he allegedly stabbed two men to death in a 2017 rush-hour attack.
In a motion filed Dec. 6, the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office asks that jurors be allowed to visit the train car where Ricky Best and Taliesin Namkai-Meche were killed.
"TriMet has agreed to set aside Car 415 for this jury view," the motion says. "Jurors will be transported by a pre-arranged bus to the TriMet garage facility and have an opportunity to view inside and outside the train car."
It wasn't clear from the motion whether TriMet has kept Car 415 in service since the killings, or whether it has been kept in the agency's garage since May 2017. But TriMet spokeswoman Roberta Altstadt tells WW the train car has been returned to service.
It's not unusual for murder trials to include jury visits to the crime scene. (Most famously, jurors in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson toured both his house and the home of Nicole Brown Simpson while the case was argued.) In this case, prosecutors argue that the witness testimony will only make sense if jurors can see where people were standing when they saw the slayings.
Christian is accused of killing Best and Namkai-Meche by stabbing them in the neck with a knife when they came to the defense of two teenage girls that Christian allegedly targeted in a hate-filled screed. The killings occurred in a crowded train car traveling between Lloyd Center and the Hollywood Transit Center in May 2017.
Christian's first-degree murder trial is currently scheduled to begin on Jan. 21.