Key witness breaks down on stand

As LaToya Thomas Dickson was led out of the courtroom to gather herself yesterday afternoon, with about 20 minutes left in the opening day’s proceedings, she let out a yell from a hallway adjoining the courtroom. Minutes later, Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Paul Treseler, after meeting with her, informed Judge Linda Giles that Dickson had had enough for the day. Dickson is expected to retake the stand today, so Barry Wilson, the attorney for Antwan Carter, can finish his cross examination.

Earlier in the day, Dickson told an eight-woman, six-man jury that she overheard Carter and her former boyfriend Daniel Pinckney Jr. talk about “going down to Highland Street and getting one of those kids’’ two years ago.

Dickson, who has been under police protection since returning to Boston last Thursday, after being relocated to an undisclosed location, said she was in the vehicle with the accused killers on March 14, 2007, when Cedirick Steele was fatally shot. Steele, an 18-year-old honor student at Bunker Hill Community College, was waiting at a bus stop near Centre Street and Highland Avenue, across from James P. Timilty Middle School, when the bullets started flying.

Steele had been about to take his mother on an errand, and prosecutors say he was killed because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pinckney and Carter were allegedly driving in the Highland Avenue area, with Dickson in the car, when they saw a group they believed to be rivals who had fired gunshots at Pinckney earlier that day.

Pinckney allegedly gave Carter a gun and instructed him to leave the car and open fire. The bullets missed the intended targets and hit Steele, who happened to be standing in the same area. Steele was shot seven times.

Seven months later, police arrested Pinckney, 21, and Carter, 20, both residents of the South End. They were charged with first-degree murder and unlawful possession of a firearm as joint venturers. Carter also is charged with a single count of witness intimidation.

Dickson said she didn’t see Carter fire any shots, but witnessed him leave Pinckney’s car wearing a green hoodie, toting a silver handgun, and wearing her black gloves. She said that minutes after he left, she heard gunfire, and then saw Carter run back to the car, throwing off the hoodie before he entered. Dickson testified that Carter was agitated and nudged her with the handgun as if to get her to take the weapon. She refused and asked Pinckney to drop her off at her mother’s house.

Her testimony could be tenuous; Wilson and James Greenberg, Pinckney’s attorney, sought to portray Dickson as an unreliable witness by comparing her taped statements to police investigators in May 2007 with those she made to a grand jury in June 2007 and in court yesterday.

Dickson initially told police that she and Pinckney were at his mother’s house in Webster at the time of the shooting, but after she was subpoenaed, she said she was in Pinckney’s car with him and Carter. Numerous times during the cross examinations by Wilson and Greenburg, Dickson said she couldn’t recall some things she had told authorities two years ago.

Dickson acknowledged yesterday that her initial statements to police were untrue.

“I told them me and Daniel Pinckney went to his mom’s house. I was scared, didn’t know what would happen for snitching.’’