SNIPER VICTIM TALKS

[AussieMark]

Boy tells of day he was shot by sniper

WASHINGTON: The only child shot during last year's sniper spree in the Washington-Virginia suburbs told a jury his story yesterday, calmly and succinctly: "I put my book bag down and I got shot."

Iran Brown, 14, was cut down on his way to his middle school in Bowie, Maryland, last October.

He recalled the horror of the shooting during two minutes of testimony yesterday at John Allen Muhammad's murder trial, answering prosecutors' ques- tions in a relaxed, matter-of- fact manner.

"I walked out [of the car] and I put my book bag down and I got shot," the boy said.

After the shooting, Iran walked back to his aunt's car, who drove him to a nearby urgent care treatment centre.

Army veteran Muhammad, 42, and Lee Boyd Malvo, 17, have been accused of shooting 19 people, killing 13 and wounding six in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC. Malvo's trial begins next month.

The aunt, Tanya Brown, testified she dropped Iran at school because he had been barred from the school bus for a few days for eating lollies.

She heard a loud noise, then heard Iran calling for her. "He told me, 'I've been shot'. I didn't believe him at first," she said. Then she saw a hole in his shirt and a dark stain, apparently blood.

Ms Brown, a nurse, said she decided to drive Iran to the urgent care centre almost instinctively.

She wept while prosecutors played the emergency call tape in which she calmly explained she was driving Iran to the clinic. His cries were heard in the background.

At one point, she told him: "You're not going to die."

"He told me that he loved me," she said.

Martin Eichelberger, the doctor at Children's Hospital in Washington who operated on Iran, said he removed the spleen and parts of his liver and pancreas. But the bullet that entered his left chest missed the heart and lungs.

A police cadet testified that he found a ballpoint pen barrel in a field less than 100m from the shooting scene. Court records indicate that Muhammad's DNA was on the pen part.

Muhammad is on trial for the shooting of Dean Harold Meyers outside a Virginia petrol station on October 9. Prosecutors must prove multiple murders to obtain a capital murder conviction on one of the two death penalty charges against Muhammad.