Bryannita Nicholson, who stood by the defendant, Eric R. Holder Jr., testified that she had driven him to and from the scene of the shooting, providing one of the prosecution’s key accounts of the episode. The day of the shooting had started uneventfully, he testified. She and Mr. Holder had met a little more than a month earlier when she was driving part-time for Lyft and picked him up as a fare. In the weeks that followed, she said, they grew closer, and she often drove Mr. Holder on outings to Long Beach or Los Angeles, to the beach, to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Their relationship was casual, she said. On the day of the shooting, Ms. Nicholson testified, the couple headed to a nearby swap meet. Ms. Nicholson was granted immunity from prosecution for her testimony. When Ms. Nicholson entered a shopping plaza that day so that Mr. Holder could buy chili cheese fries, she said, she spotted Nipsey Hussle standing outside his store, Marathon Clothing. He remarked to Mr. Holder that he thought Hustle was handsome and that he wanted to be photographed with him. Mr. Holder did not indicate that he knew the rapper from the neighborhood, he testified. He approached Hussle, who was surrounded by a group of men, to take a selfie, he testified. It would be the last photo of the rapper. Some witnesses testified that Hussle had warned Mr. Holder that there were rumors that he had cooperated with law enforcement or that he had wiretapped. Ms. Nicholson testified that she heard Mr. Holder ask Husle if he had an initiation, but that Husle seemed to push him away. She said she got back in the car and pulled into a nearby alley for Mr. Holder to eat, she said. Mr Holder then pulled out a handgun, which Ms Nicholson testified worried her, but she had previously said she believed he had weapons for protection. Mr. Holder then got out of the car and left his fries on the hood of a nearby truck, he said. A short time later, Ms. Nicholson said, she heard gunshots. When Mr. Holder got back into her car, she testified, he told her to drive or he would slap her. She testified that she did not realize at that point that he might be the shooter. That night, she testified, she agreed to let Mr. Holder stay at her mother’s house with her and later helped him check into a motel using her identification. It wasn’t until a day after the killing, when her mother recognized Ms. Nicholson’s white Chevy Cruze on the news, that she realized Mr. Holder might be involved, she testified. “I was hoping it didn’t have anything to do with it,” Ms Nicholson told John McKinney, the prosecutor in the case, during her testimony. “I was nervous at the time.” In his opening statement, Mr McKinney had portrayed Ms Nicholson as a kind of unwitting accomplice. “When Ms. Nicholson testifies, pay attention to her,” he said. “I think you’ll find in her a naivety, a simplicity.” Mr McKinney stressed that Ms Nicholson quickly agreed to cooperate with the police. She allowed authorities to access data from her phone and was interviewed for hours. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is my reputation,’” she testified in court. Aaron Jansen, Mr. Holder’s public defender, asked Ms. Nicholson about some minor discrepancies between her previous accounts and those she gave on the stand: the color of a truck where Mr. Holder left his potatoes, whether Hassle had tell Mr. Holder “to relax.” (Ms Nicholson responded that Hussle’s demeanor was “cool” and said she had not instructed Mr Holder to calm down.) On the witness stand, Ms. Nicholson mostly answered questions with a calm “yes” or “I don’t know.” Mr. Holder, wearing a gray suit with a faint pattern on the window, mostly avoided her eyes or gazed passionately at her.
