CHARLOTTE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The second day of trial for the man accused of shooting and killing Dickson County Sgt. Daniel Baker resumed with more witness testimony.
Steven Wiggins is charged with premeditated first-degree murder after authorities say he shot Baker four times after the sergeant stopped the vehicle, which had been reported stolen. He's facing the death penalty.
Watch Day 2 of the trial below
Agent Nathaniel Proctor, with the judicial drug task force, testified first and detailed the circumstances in which he found Baker’s patrol vehicle, saying he saw a streak of blood and radioed to get permission to break the window – and eventually saw Baker’s body.
“As a father I thought about his little girl, I watched for the rise and fall of his breath and hadn’t seen it, he’d been set on fire, he was burned under his arm to his waist,” Proctor said.
Agent Darrin Adams, also with the drug task force, described finding Baker’s body, saying there was, “a lot of trauma, a lot of blood.”
"I went to pull back on [Baker's] shoulder and check for a pulse, and that’s when I saw his head and knew there was nothing else that could be done. At that point, I tried to back up and take a breath and realized this crime scene could be the only thing that could point us to his killer," he said.
Adams said he spotted Baker’s body camera, and said it was hot and had burn holes on it. He said they tried to run a K9 track from the start but that dog was young, and they weren’t successful. He said they tried with a second K9 and “then things just evolved.”
“That night when everything had calmed down after about 20 hours, I went home. My feet were wet, they were bleeding, I took my boots off at the back door and they have sat there for three years, I haven’t cleaned them and I said I wouldn’t wear them until today… with the same blood sweat tears and mud,” said Adams.
One agent says for 3 years the boots he wore when he found Sgt. Baker’s body have sat on his back porch. After a 20 hour day running tracks to look for the suspect, he hasn’t moved them until today… he wore them to court with the same ‘blood, sweat, and tears’ as that day @nc5
— Alexandra Koehn (@NC5_AKoehn) August 3, 2021
On the first day of the trial, several of the deputies who responded to the scene cried during their testimonies while describing what they saw.
“We walked down the hill, and we saw a grey silver Saturn and looking around, we saw a pool of blood," said Sgt. Gregory Dearborn.
In opening statements, Wiggins' attorney Luke Evans claimed the shooting was not premeditated in hopes of avoiding the death penalty.
However, District Attorney General Ray Crouch said that Wiggins told agents that shooting Sgt. Baker was "... like a dog, you don’t let it suffer."
DA Crouch is seeking the death penalty in the case. Erika Castro-Miles, a woman who was with Wiggins, is also charged and will be tried later.
