The trial for Lansing resident Benjamin French for his alleged involvement in the deaths of MSU student Darren Brown and his roommate Owen Goodenow in March 2010, continues today in Lansing’s 30th Circuit Court.
The prosecution began introducing evidence and called its first witnesses to the stand.
Tyler Cole, Brown and Goodenow’s former roommate, was first to be questioned in the case. Cole was the first person to discover his two roommates had died.
On March 25, 2010, Cole returned to his home on the 3200 block of Glasgow Drive after work and found Brown on the ground in the living room, laying on his back with his right arm placed over his eyes.
Cole went to check on his roommate and when he moved Brown’s arm, Cole said he saw a large amount of blood coming from the back of his head.
Cole then went to check on Goodenow.
“I pushed (Goodenow’s bedroom) door open and I saw Owen hunched over on his computer desk,” Cole said. “His arms were folded and his head was down on his arms…There was blood on the floor, but that was all I could really see.”
Joseph Riedel, a patrol officer for the Lansing Police Dept., also was questioned by both the prosecution and the defense this afternoon.
Riedel was a member of the tactical team that first responded to Cole’s emergency call. He found both Brown and Goodenow unresponsive, he said.
Upon inspecting Goodenow’s bedroom, Riedel said it appeared to have been ransacked, with clothes thrown about the room and it looked as though someone was searching for something, he said.
No one was else was in the house at the time.
Michelle Elieff, the forensic pathologist at Sparrow Hospital who conducted the autopsies on Brown and Goodenow, took the stand as well.
Elieff described the manner in which the two men died and confirmed they both died from intermediate range gunshot wounds to the head.
The trial will continue tomorrow at 8:30 a.m.
Keep checking statenews.com for updates.
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