His Own Words, a Doctor's Wheel, and the Tests Nobody Ran

Sophie R. was 17 when she came out of the passenger side of a black Chevrolet Silverado on Field View Drive in Burlington, a few houses from her own front door, on the night of May 20, 2023. On Thursday, the first day of trial, the jury heard her family tell five different versions of what Cooper Ouellette said about that ride. On Friday the jury heard him say it himself.

"I unlocked the door."

That sentence came out of a detective's body camera, recorded on the porch of Cooper's family home at dawn on May 21, 2023, a few hours after Sophie died. It is the act the State charged. On Thursday I wrote that a full day of testimony had gone by without one witness saying a word about the lock the State built its case on. By the middle of Friday morning, the jury had it, in his own voice.

And by twenty minutes to five that afternoon, the State's medical examiner had told the same jury something the charge never spells out: "I do believe that she was run over by the wheel of the vehicle."

In between those two moments sat the most important three hours of the trial so far, and they did not belong to the State. They belonged to a crash reconstructionist from the State Police who took the stand under a defense subpoena and told the jury he found no evidence the truck or its rear tire ever struck her. They belonged to a sergeant who processed that truck twice and found no blood and no hair on the bumper, the lights, the undercarriage or the rear right tire. And they belonged to a list of tests that could have answered the question the doctor answered from the autopsy table, and that, as far as anything said in that courtroom on Friday, nobody ever ran.

Cooper Ouellette has pleaded not guilty to both charges. He is presumed innocent, and nothing here is a finding. What follows is what was said in open court on Day 2, what I think it does to each thing the State has to prove, and the questions the defense gets to ask on Monday.

WATCH THE WHOLE DAY: THE LIVE BROADCAST The Life360 Trial, Day 2, as it aired from New Britain

What the State still has to prove

A quick reset, because Friday only makes sense against the charge. Count one is manslaughter in the first degree, the reckless-indifference kind. The State has to prove four things beyond a reasonable doubt: that Cooper's conduct created a grave risk of death, that he was aware of that risk and consciously disregarded it, that he did it under circumstances showing an extreme indifference to human life, and that his conduct caused Sophie's death. The information the judge read to the jury on Thursday names the conduct: he gave her alcohol, behaved assaultively toward her, drove recklessly with her in the truck, and unlocked her passenger door while the truck was moving. She "separated" from the truck, the State says, and suffered crushing injuries.

Count two is narrower. As the parties agreed to instruct it, the State has to prove that Cooper willfully gave alcohol to Sophie herself, and that she was under 21.

Keep the word "crushing" in mind. It was in the charge on Thursday, and on Friday afternoon it became the whole case.

The truck in the driveway, and three words from his mother

Court was set for ten o'clock sharp and started a little late. The State began where it left off Thursday, by recalling Detective Tyler Bastos of Western District Major Crime. On Thursday he took Sophie's phone and passcode from her mother at Bristol Hospital and attended the autopsy. On Friday the State picked him up as he left the hospital in the early hours of Sunday, May 21, and followed him to 29 Harmony Hill Road in Harwinton, Cooper's home.

The truck was in the driveway. Uniformed troopers had been parked in the street since about 2:30 or 2:45 that morning, watching the house and the truck so nobody went in or out of it. Nobody knocked. The jury saw the truck for the first time in two photographs, and Bastos, who had called it a black Dodge, corrected himself while looking at it: a Chevrolet Silverado 2500, a full-size, heavy-duty pickup.

Nobody at the house spoke to police until about 6:30, Bastos said, and it was Cooper's mother who came out. She was "very apprehensive," he told the jury, wanting to know why police had been outside her house since five in the morning. Told something had happened involving Cooper and his girlfriend, she said she knew about it. And about twenty seconds in, she asked a question.

"Is she dead?"

The State let that sit. It is a powerful moment and I understand why the prosecutor built to it. But it is worth being clear about what it is. Those are his mother's words, not his. They tell you a mother had heard enough by dawn to fear the worst. They do not tell the jury anything Cooper did on Field View Drive, and the defense can say exactly that when the case is argued.

CLIP · LIVE 1:00 PM ET MON NOV 2 Detective Testifies Cooper Ouellette's Mother Asked 'Is She Dead?' in the Life360 Trial

Cooper was 18 that morning, old enough in Connecticut to decide for himself whether to talk to police. He did. He sat with Bastos, the lead detective, Ryan Slavey, and a third detective in the three-season porch between the garage and the house, with his mother there. Bastos had his body camera on his chest and turned it on before they started. The conversation ended when Cooper's mother asked the detectives to leave the room.

Two more things from that porch. Bastos noticed what looked like blood on Cooper's clothing and asked for it; the mother said no at first, and police eventually got it. And the truck was towed to the Troop L barracks in Litchfield and locked in a garage. Whatever the truck later showed, or did not show, the State has now walked it from the driveway to a secure bay.

The transcript the jury will never read

Then came the first ruling of the day that matters. The State offered two things: the body camera video itself, Exhibit 69, and a four-page typed transcript of it that Bastos had checked line by line, Exhibit 70. The judge said he had been told last week there was no objection. There was one now. The defense said the video was the best evidence, and the jurors could listen for themselves.

The lawyers went into chambers, and when they came back the judge sided with the defense. The jury gets the video. It does not get the transcript.

I think that was the right call, and I want to say why, because it is the kind of ruling nobody outside a courtroom notices. A recording made on a porch at dawn, with a grieving mother in the room and a scared 18-year-old talking, is going to have words in it that are hard to hear. A typed page settles every one of those words in the State's favor before the jury has listened once, and it goes back to the jury room in black and white. Without it, every disputed word belongs to the six people who will decide this case. That is how it should be. It is also a reminder for us. When we quote that video, we are quoting what the courtroom audio carried, and on the line that matters most, the State's own next question to its own detective repeated it back: did Cooper tell you he unlocked the door before the truck stopped on Polly Dan? Bastos said yes.

Ten miles an hour, three feet, and "Yeah, I'm fine"

For the first time in this trial, the jury heard Cooper Ouellette's own account of that night.

He told the detectives they were driving toward Sophie's home, talking about the next day the way they always did on Sundays. He turned onto Polly Dan Road, went maybe half a mile, and she said she needed to throw up. He put his blinker on to pull over. "Before I can even pull over, she just jumps out." He put his speed at about 30, and by the time she went, about 10.

The detective asked what anyone would ask. How did she fall? And Cooper's answer is the sentence this whole case is charged on. She had sort of readied herself to jump, he said: "I unlocked the door," and when she went to jump out, she was facing out of the truck.

He said he stood on the brakes, stopped within about three feet, threw it in park and jumped out. He asked if she was okay. "She said, yeah, I'm fine." He told her she needed to go home, picked her up, put her back in the truck, asked if she still had to throw up ("No, I'm fine now"), and drove the short distance to her house. By the bottom of the driveway she was out of it and would not respond.

Put that next to Thursday. To Sophie's mother at the emergency room, he said she needed to throw up and fell out while he was still going about 20. To her brother he gave two versions, one on Polly Dan nearly stopped, one on Field View at a normal pace. On a police camera a few hours later, the word was "jumps," the place was a quiet dip on Polly Dan, and the speed was 10.

Here is the part I think matters most, and it cuts both ways. The State finally has the act it charged, from the only other person in that truck. That is real. But listen to how he says it. In Cooper's telling, unlocking the door was help, for a girl about to be sick on the side of the road. The State's theory needs the jury to hear that same act as reckless, as a young man aware of a deadly risk and choosing to ignore it. His account needs them to hear it as a bad decision made in a few seconds by a kid trying to get his girlfriend out of the truck before she threw up in it. The words are the same either way. The fight is over what was in his head when he said them, and that is the second and third elements of count one, not the first.

One more thing from the video, and it is one the State has to handle with care. Asked to come to the barracks and give a full typed statement, the answer from the room was: not until a lawyer got there. The jury heard that. The law does not let the State use a person's choice to have a lawyer as evidence that he did something wrong, and it does not let a prosecutor hint at it in closing. Nobody objected on Friday, and I think the defense was happy not to draw attention to it. Watch the State's closing for it. If it shows up, that is an objection and possibly an appeal.

CASE STORY PART 6 · WATCH NOW Jury Hears Cooper Ouellette Tell Police Sophie Jumped Out at 10 MPH in the Life360 Trial

The wrong place, and no skid marks

Then the State showed why it played the video. Bastos circled on the overhead map the spot Cooper described: the dip on Polly Dan, heavily wooded, no houses. Because Cooper put Sophie's exit there, the unit searched it. They found nothing. He said he stood on the brakes. They found no skid marks.

What the unit did find, Bastos said, was the actual place Sophie left the truck: just outside 30 Field View Drive, at a bend near her own home. There are houses there. That morning, he added, Cooper never mentioned where they had been that evening, never mentioned the Schultz party, never mentioned drinking.

So the State sat down on a contrast: a lonely stretch of road in his account, and a street of houses, steps from her parents' door, in theirs. I'll come back to how far apart those two places actually are, because the State's own reconstructionist was about to say something about that.

CLIP · WATCH NOW Detective Testifies No Skid Marks Where Cooper Ouellette Said Sophie Jumped in the Life360 Trial

Two hours, a "motor vehicle accident," and nobody asked about drinking

Defense lawyer Martin Minnella's cross of Bastos started with the man in charge. The lead investigator is Detective Slavey. Did Slavey read Bastos's reports? Bastos could not say. They worked hand in hand, in the same office, every day.

Then Minnella softened the picture of the mother. She told the detectives to wait outside while she spoke with Cooper, and then she invited them in. Cooper shook their hands, Bastos agreed, was very polite, answered every question and appeared to cry. He "seemed to stagger a bit," but it was early in the morning.

Then the clock. Bastos got to the hospital around 4:30 and to Cooper's house at 6:30. Two hours before anyone spoke to the young man who was, by then, the person police wanted to talk to. There is no protocol for that, Bastos said. He is one person; he started with the family because Sophie could not speak and her parents could. Minnella pressed, and pressed again, and finally got the answer: could somebody in the department have spoken to Cooper sooner? "Yes."

Along the way the jury heard the title of Bastos's own report. The State objected that it was outside the scope; the judge let it in. Shown the report, Bastos agreed that at the time he called it a motor vehicle accident.

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And then the cross ended on the question I think matters most for this case. Did anyone ask Cooper for a blood or urine test? No. Did Bastos ask him whether he had been drinking that night? "I did not. I don't believe so." By then, Bastos said, it was hours after midnight, and a test probably would not have been possible.

Stop on that. The State has charged Cooper with giving Sophie alcohol, and its whole theory of recklessness leans on a night of drinking. Two of Sophie's family members told the jury on Thursday they smelled alcohol on him. And the detective who sat across from him at dawn, on camera, never asked him if he had been drinking. The troopers watched his house from about 2:30, and nobody knocked until 6:30. I am not saying a test would have helped the State or hurt it. I am saying it is a question the State's own investigation decided not to ask, and the jury now knows it.

On redirect the State asked one thing: how did police know to go to Cooper at all? Sophie's parents told them. Bastos stepped down.

FULL TESTIMONY · LIVE 12:30 PM ET SUN NOV 1 Tyler Bastos: Full Testimony, Cooper Ouellette's Body Cam Account in the Life360 Trial

The truck: a cooler, a can and a broken chain

The next witness was the one who had been fifteen minutes away when the jury went home Thursday, Sergeant Jamie Pearson, a trooper since 2008 who supervises the major crime detectives for Troop L and Troop B. Her job on Friday was the truck.

Two search warrants, both signed by a Superior Court judge. A 2013 Silverado, registered and insured to Cooper's mother at the Harmony Hill address. In the bed, a Yeti cooler. Every item in it, she said, was an alcoholic beverage. In the driver's cup holder, a can cooler holding a spiked Arnold Palmer, the same kind as the cans in the bed.

Then the measurements, and this was the State putting the jury beside the passenger door. The top of the passenger seat sits about three feet five inches off the ground. The running board, about one foot eight. The bottom of the frame clears the road by about fourteen inches. The rear right tire, the one behind the door Sophie came out of, stands about two feet seven. Its tread was photographed with rulers beside it, Pearson said, so a laboratory could reproduce the pattern. On Thursday the defense hammered on the fact that nobody had compared Sophie's clothing with that truck's tires. On Friday the State put the tread itself on the record, to scale.

And on the driver's side floor, the unit found a necklace. It has writing on it. "Yes, it says Cooper." It was broken, Pearson said, and not at the clasp where the two ends normally join. Somewhere along the chain.

The information charges that Cooper behaved assaultively toward Sophie that night. On Thursday the jury heard nothing that spoke to it. A broken chain with his name on it, on his side of the truck, is the first piece of physical evidence that might. The State did not say whose neck it was on or how it broke. Hold that thought until the medical examiner.

On the passenger side, they found what looked like blood: on the outside of the front passenger door above the handle, on the floor mat, the center console, the edge of the passenger seat nearest the driver, the black sill you step over on the way out, and inside the rear passenger door. None of it has been tested in front of this jury. "Blood-like" is all a processor can say. And to be fair to both sides, blood on the seat and the console fits Cooper's own account just as well as the State's: he says he picked her up and put her back in that seat and drove her home. The stains on the outside of the door, and on the rear door, are the ones his account explains less easily.

Last, the lights. The truck had aftermarket lighting along the outside of each rocker panel, worked by a switch on the dash. On Thursday, the arrival video at Sophie's house showed a flashing light on the truck. The State showed the jury the truck lit up and sat down without saying what it makes of that. I expect we will find out.

Twice processed, and clean where it counts

The defense cross turned the sergeant's careful work around in about seven minutes.

The truck was processed a second time on June 29, 2023, more than five weeks later, with an alternate light source and luminol, a chemical that reacts with traces of blood too faint to see. Including the undercarriage. Nothing new. Then the defense went down the front of the truck one piece at a time. Blood on the front bumper? No. On the headlights? No. Hair on the bumper or the lights? No. Blood or hair on the rear right tire, the one the jury had just seen measured and photographed? None.

A piece of the tire tread was cut out and seized. Was it ever tested? She did not know; results go to the lead detective. Was the tread ever compared with Sophie's clothing? She did not believe the state lab had a specialist who could do it. Had she heard of the FBI laboratory at Quantico? Yes, and her department has used it, so it could have been done here. Was it? "I don't know."

The cans in the cooler in the bed were unopened. And the necklace, gloved and bagged and sealed in an envelope precisely to protect it from contamination, was never sent for DNA testing by her, and she did not know if anyone else did. Why collect it, then? "It is a piece of the story," she said, "and the way we viewed it is it was out of place and broken."

Last question. How many times had she spoken with the lead detective about this case? "Probably zero."

CLIP · LIVE 10:00 AM ET SUN NOV 1 Crime Scene Sergeant Testifies No Blood or Hair on Ouellette's Truck Bumper in the Life360 Trial

The State's redirect had one answer for all of it: the rain. It had been raining that night, Pearson had been told, and the truck was driven from Field View Drive back to Harmony Hill on wet roads. The defense objected that anything about what water might have done was a guess. The judge let her answer. Could rain on the road have washed evidence off the undercarriage and the tires? Yes, she said.

Maybe it could. But look at what the State is now asking the jury to accept. It collected a necklace with the defendant's name on it and never tested it for DNA. It cut a piece out of the tire and cannot tell the jury what became of it. It photographed the tread to scale so a lab could compare it, and the comparison, as far as this jury knows, never happened. An FBI lab the department has used before sat available. And the State's explanation for a clean truck is that the rain did it. The rain did not stop anyone from testing the things they bagged.

FULL TESTIMONY · LIVE 10:00 AM ET MON NOV 2 Sgt. Jamie Pearson: Full Testimony, Inside Ouellette's Truck in the Life360 Trial

The reconstructionist the defense was ready to call

After the morning break, the State called the witness the defense had been pointing at since Thursday afternoon: Detective Spencer Bronson of the State Police Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Squad, the unit everyone calls CARS. Three witnesses on Day 1 were asked about his reconstruction, and none had read it. Now he was in the chair.

He is not a veteran. A trooper since 2020, about two years and a month in CARS, more than a hundred serious and fatal crash scenes. He is back on patrol now. On May 21, 2023, his unit was sent to Field View Drive.

He laid the scene out on a drone map. The spot sits just past the driveway of number 30, at the bend where Field View Drive turns into Polly Dan Road. Remember the contrast the State drew an hour earlier, between Cooper's quiet dip on Polly Dan and the State's street of houses? Bronson's circle sits right at the seam between the two roads. Here is why that matters: if the dip and the bend are a few hundred feet apart, the State's "he lied about the place" becomes "he was imprecise about the place," and those are very different arguments. The distance between them is not in evidence yet. It should be.

On the road that morning lay a tan roper boot, size eight and a half, a right foot, and a hair clip. On Thursday the jury saw Sophie's left boot and heard she came home with only one. Bronson put on gloves, cut the seal and took out the other one. The pair is back together in that courtroom: one came home on Sophie, one stayed on Field View Drive beside her blood.

His unit found the first point of contact, about three and a half feet in from the edge of a 21-foot road with no center line, and a mark on the asphalt from Sophie herself running about twelve feet to where she came to rest. At the end of it, pooled blood. The truck was going west, away from her house. Was it in its own lane? He could not tell.

Then he found something I don't think the jury expected. Working west toward Polly Dan, his unit found a track of crushed seedlings, the little winged helicopters trees drop on the road, uncrushed everywhere except along one path, with marks from her clothing pressed into the road among them. It runs about 54 feet, in the truck's direction, and ends at the hair clip, about a hundred feet beyond the boot. Bronson called it a drag area. No skid marks anywhere, though on a wet road, he said, a truck braking hard would be expected to leave them. And from the twelve feet she slid, he worked out the truck's speed when she separated: about 13 to 15 miles an hour.

CLIP · LIVE 3:00 PM ET MON NOV 2 Crash Detective Maps a Boot and Hair Clip Near Sophie's Home in Ouellette's Life360 Trial

Hold that next to the body camera. Cooper said about 10, that he stood on the brakes and stopped within three feet. The State's reconstructionist says 13 to 15, no braking marks anywhere, and a 54-foot track in the truck's direction that ends at something from her hair. The speed is close to his. Almost nothing else is.

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"No, I did not"

The cross opened with a fact the jury had not heard. Bronson was under subpoena from the defense. If the State had not called him, Cooper's lawyers were going to.

Think about what that means. The defense was prepared to put the State Police's own crash reconstructionist on the stand as its witness. Most of what followed explains why.

His report listed Detective Slavey as the primary officer; Bronson said that "could be an error." Did he report his findings to Slavey? Not at the time, and not that he could recall. Did Sophie leave the truck twice that night? At the time of his investigation, he did not know that; he knows it now. His unit never processed Locust Road and never processed Route 72. While they worked Field View Drive, they knew of only one location. He had never read the arrest warrant.

Then the second defense lawyer took over on the numbers. Any sign the truck slowed down at all? None. Was he familiar with Life360? He had heard of it, did not know how it works, and had never used it in an investigation. And this is where the case's name came into the room for the first time with a witness on the stand. The defense asked whether anyone had told him that Life360 put the truck at 20 miles an hour when Sophie left it. The State objected, saying among other things that the question misstated what the Life360 data shows, and the jury went out while the lawyers argued it. When they came back, the judge told them only that the question was withdrawn.

So we still do not know, from any witness, what the Life360 data says. After two days, the evidence this trial is named for, in our own coverage too, has not been presented to this jury. The State is entitled to put its case on in whatever order it chooses. Still, the jury is carrying that fact into the weekend, and so should we.

Then the defense walked Bronson through his own report, and in its hands the reconstruction read like careful, modern work: drone mapping, satellite positioning, a laser scan of the truck that captures millions of data points, physical evidence driving the conclusions. The defense was praising the method because it likes the answers. And then it got the two answers it subpoenaed him for.

Did he find any evidence that Sophie was struck by the truck? "No, I did not." Any evidence she was struck by the rear tire? None.

CLIP · LIVE 2:30 PM ET SUN NOV 1 Crash Detective Admits He Found No Evidence the Truck Struck Sophie in Ouellette's Life360 Trial

The truck's event data recorder, its black box, had no events on it. That device wakes up in a crash hard enough to set off the airbags; it does not record a door opening. Did the truck have GPS? That was outside his scope, Bronson said; location belonged to the major crime detectives. And if a satellite could tell you how fast the truck was going? He would take it into consideration, but GPS information "may not be a hundred percent accurate." He trusts the scene.

When the cross finished after lunch, Minnella locked it into the paper. His report found no mechanical defect in the truck. When the report says "collision," it means Sophie hitting the road, not the truck hitting her. The truck had no collision damage. And if he had seen any sign she was struck or run over, he agreed, he would have put it in the report.

The door video was shot on another road

Before lunch, almost in passing, Bronson said something that should have stopped the room. How did his unit conclude that the truck's right front door opened? "At the time of the accident, we were supplied with a video from major crime that depicted a video of the door opening and her separating from the truck."

The jury has not seen any video of that door opening on Field View Drive. Neither have we. So I waited for somebody to explain it, and on redirect the State did, and the explanation is worse than the mystery. Bronson watched that video standing on Field View Drive that day. Later, after his report was written, he learned it was not taken on Field View at all. It was taken on Locust Road in Burlington.

If you followed Day 1, you know Locust Road. It is where Sophie's own phone recorded a video at about 11:24 p.m., the video that went to the jury on Thursday afternoon with no testimony about what it shows. It is where the defense says Sophie first left the truck that night. So the only picture anyone has described of that passenger door opening comes from an earlier stop, on a different road, and the State's reconstructionist reached his conclusion about the door at the death scene at least partly on footage of something else.

CLIP · WATCH NOW Detective Testifies the Door Video He Relied On Was Shot on Another Street in the Life360 Trial

I want to be fair about what this does, because it does two things. For the defense, an expert's opinion is only as strong as what it rests on, and part of this one rested on the wrong road. For the State, it confirms from its own witness that the door opened and Sophie came out of the truck once already that night, on Locust Road, which the State can use to say Cooper knew exactly what could happen with that door before Field View Drive. The defense will use the same fact the other way: a girl who left the truck on her own once is a girl who left it on her own again. Both arguments are now in play, and both came from the State's witness.

"Not always, no"

Then the prosecutor asked the question the State most needed answered after this witness: did the lack of evidence at the scene mean Sophie was not run over by the rear tire? The defense objected that it called for speculation, and the jury went out for most of half an hour while the lawyers argued it, none of it on the feed.

When the jurors came back, the prosecutor asked it the way the law lets an expert answer. If a vehicle is going 20 miles an hour or less and a person who separates from it is run over by the right rear tire, would you always expect to find evidence of that at the scene? "Not always, no." No airbag deployed, and the black box would not wake up for a tire rolling over something at those speeds.

That is a fair answer and a limited one. It keeps a run-over possible. It does not make it proved. And the defense's reply, I think, was the sharpest exchange of the day. Had he heard of pattern recognition? The State objected that it was beyond the scope; after a sidebar the judge allowed it. In his field, Bronson said, whenever someone is run over by a tire there is evidence of it somewhere, on the person, on the scene or on the clothing. Did he know whether anyone ever tested Sophie's clothing for a tire pattern? "No, I do not."

Would it have helped if the truck had still been at the scene when he got there? Yes. If Sophie had still been there? Yes. The prosecutor got one question back in: would you expect a tire pattern on clothing in every case under 20 miles an hour? Not in every case.

And then the defense said out loud what it had been building to all day. Her clothes were recovered at the hospital. They have been in the State's hands for more than two and a half years. The judge sustained the objection that this was argument, and he was right that it was. But the facts underneath it are in evidence, and a jury may weigh what an investigation did not do when it asks whether the State proved its case.

FULL TESTIMONY · LIVE 12:30 PM ET MON NOV 2 Spencer Bronson: Full Testimony, the Crash Detective's Speed Math in the Life360 Trial

Ten months on the wrong road

The next witness was Detective Daniel Koehler of Western District Major Crime, nearly nine years a trooper, who spelled his name for the record. The State brought him in for two jobs, and both are foundation for the evidence still to come.

The first was Cooper's phone. On May 26, 2023, six days after Sophie died, Koehler and Detective Slavey waited in the parking lot of Oliver Wolcott Technical School in Torrington with a warrant to search Cooper and take his phone. When Cooper came out after school, Slavey put him in handcuffs and searched him. Koehler seized a black phone and sealed it in a Faraday bag, a pouch that blocks signals so nobody can reach the phone remotely. A second warrant followed to search it. A local department could not get in; the state forensic lab in Meriden did. On cross, the defense made sure the jury heard the rest: handcuffs are standard when a search warrant is served, and Cooper cooperated and handed over the phone.

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That phone is one of the sources of the Life360 data the State's case turns on, and every step of its handling the State shows now is a step the defense cannot later call careless. But notice what the Faraday bag does not cover: the six days between Sophie's death and the seizure. The defense has said for months that Cooper's data has an eleven-minute hole at the most important time of the night. Whether that hole is in the app or in the phone's history is a question for the analyst, and the analyst has not testified.

His second job was the hunt for video. On May 25 and 26, the unit stopped at 50 to 70 homes and businesses along the route of that night, starting at the Schultz business on Route 72 in Terryville and working north to Route 4, then east to Johnnycake Mountain Road and down to Polly Dan and Field View. Some places had video; Hogan Cider Mill and two homes on Johnnycake Mountain Road handed it over on the spot.

And then the State did something worth credit. It brought out its own investigation's mistake before the defense could. In March 2024, about ten months after Sophie died, major crime learned the truck had not simply driven Route 72 to Route 4. It turned off onto Locust Road. Koehler circled the turn on the map. So the careful canvas of May 2023 searched a route the truck did not take for part of the way, and nobody went looking for cameras on Locust Road until almost a year later. When they did, they found nothing of value.

CLIP · LIVE 10:00 AM ET TUE NOV 3 Detective Testifies Police Learned of the Locust Road Turn 10 Months Later in the Life360 Trial

On cross the defense filled in who found the mistake. It was not a detective. An analyst at NESPIN, the regional police information network the State sent its phone data to, told Detective Slavey around March 18, 2024. Think about that for a second. The phone data the defense has spent a year calling unreliable is what corrected the State Police's own map of the night. Then the sharp end: once the analyst said the truck went up Locust Road, did the State Police ever do a forensic search of Locust Road? Not that Koehler knew of. They did search Route 72, where they first believed Sophie left the truck, and found a vape there.

On redirect, Koehler said "forensic" to him means the science side, DNA and fingerprints. He is an investigator, not a scientist. He ran down every lead he was given, and he never decided not to look at something.

I believe him. I also notice that the list of things nobody ran keeps getting longer, and none of the people on the stand Friday was the person who decides what gets run. That person is the lead detective, Ryan Slavey. Nearly every investigator in this trial has named him. The sergeant who processed the truck spoke to him "probably zero" times. The reconstructionist never reported to him. The detective who took the body camera interview could not say whether he reads the reports. If the State calls Detective Slavey, the jury will finally hear from the man who held all of it. If it does not, the defense will spend its closing asking why.

The receipt, the cooler and the word "gave"

Koehler also carried the second count further than it had gone. By June 2023, location data from Sophie's phone put her at a package store before the party. Everyone involved was under 21, so the unit wanted to know where the alcohol came from. A warrant went to Edgewood Wine and Spirits for its video and sales records from that evening. There was no video to show who stood at the counter. But one sale, at 7:25 and 46 seconds, matched what was in the truck: a six-pack of Arnold Palmer cans, the same kind as the cooler in the bed and the can in the cup holder, and a bottle the unit tied to the same window.

CASE STORY PART 8 · WATCH NOW Detective Links a Liquor Store Receipt to Ouellette's Truck Cooler in the Life360 Trial

That is a real step for the State. The alcohol now has a store, a time and a receipt, and it ends up in the truck Cooper was driving. What it does not have is a hand. The charge, as both sides agreed to put it to the jury, is that Cooper willfully gave alcohol to Sophie. Who paid at 7:25? Who carried the bag? Who handed her what at the party? No witness has said. The cans in the cooler in the bed were unopened. The party witnesses have not testified yet, and they are where count two will be won or lost.

Koehler also wrote the warrants for the carrier records of both phones, the Life360 records for Sophie, her mother and Cooper, and Sophie's Snapchat, all of it sent to NESPIN for analysis. That is the bridge to the witness this trial is named for. And he brought one more exhibit in: Ring doorbell video from 29 Harmony Hill Road, the address both detectives gave as Cooper's home, obtained by warrant in July 2023. It was played for the jury. What it shows was not described aloud on the feed, so I am not going to guess.

CLIP · LIVE 4:00 PM ET SUN NOV 1 Detective Brings Ring Doorbell Video From Harmony Hill to the Jury in Ouellette's Life360 Trial FULL TESTIMONY · LIVE 11:30 AM ET TUE NOV 3 Daniel Koehler: Full Testimony, the Receipt, the Cooler and the Wrong Road in the Life360 Trial

The doctor who stood over the autopsy

The last witness of the week took the stand at about 3:25: Dr. Gregory Vincent, an associate medical examiner with the state's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Farmington. Eleven and a half years in Connecticut, before that New York City's medical examiner's office, more than 4,280 forensic autopsies, board certified in anatomic and forensic pathology.

And then a detail that matters more than it sounds. Dr. Vincent did not perform Sophie's autopsy. A forensic fellow in training did the examination in 2023, with Dr. Vincent standing over him as the supervising doctor, and Dr. Vincent co-signed the report to say he was there and agreed with it. That fellow has since left the office. The report, with its toxicology, came in without objection.

Here is why that matters. The Constitution gives a person on trial the right to confront the witnesses against him. When the doctor who actually did the work is gone and another doctor tells the jury what the work found, that right is in play, and courts across the country are wrestling with exactly this. In this courtroom the risk is much smaller than it could be, because Dr. Vincent was in the room and supervising, and because the defense did not object. But the defense will be entitled on Monday to ask which of his opinions come from what he saw with his own eyes and which come from the notes of a doctor the jury will never hear from.

He also told the jury what he reviewed to prepare, and one item will matter on Monday: documents and photographs from the police, including pictures of clothing and of a vehicle. Bronson told the jury earlier that the investigators presented their work at the medical examiner's office in February 2024. An expert is allowed to rely on that kind of material. But the question the defense will ask is the obvious one: did the body tell the doctor a wheel went over Sophie, or did the investigators?

A word on how we are covering this part. The court's order protects the medical examiner's exhibits, and we do not show them, describe them or pull images from them. What follows is the doctor's testimony in plain words, as the jury heard it, and no more detail than the case needs.

What the doctor said, and how far he went

The injuries to Sophie's head and face, he said, were consistent with a fall from a moving vehicle, and none of them, on their own, killed her.

Then the State asked about her neck, and reached back to the morning. There was a patterned scrape on the left side. Could it be road rash? Yes. Scratches? Yes. A necklace being forcibly ripped from her neck? "They could be, yes." Could he say, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, what caused it? No. And it did not cause her death.

That is the State laying a broken necklace with "Cooper" on it beside a mark on her neck and letting the jury look at both. The doctor would not join them. And remember, that necklace was never tested for DNA. "Could be" is a possibility. It is not an opinion the State can stand on, and it cannot argue in closing that the doctor found the chain was torn from her.

CLIP · LIVE 5:00 PM ET SUN NOV 1 Medical Examiner Says Sophie's Neck Marks Could Be From a Ripped-Off Necklace in the Life360 Trial

No broken bones in her legs, her arms or her hands. Her blood alcohol was about 0.15, and the alcohol did not cause her death. That number speaks to count two without proving it. It shows a 17-year-old had been drinking heavily that night. It says nothing about whose hand the drink came from.

On her back, he described large patterned scrapes, with lines running across them and a stippled pattern of tiny dots. What makes a scrape patterned? Something that is not smooth leaves its pattern in the skin. Can a road do that? Yes. Can a tire? Yes. That is exactly as far as the evidence goes: the marks fit a tire, and they fit the road just as well. Nobody has compared them with anything. The tread the sergeant photographed to scale that morning, so that a lab could reproduce it, has not been laid against those marks in front of this jury.

CLIP · LIVE 2:30 PM ET MON NOV 2 Medical Examiner Says a Road or Tire Could Leave Sophie's Patterned Scrapes in the Life360 Trial

Then the injuries that killed her. Ribs on her left side broken where they meet the spine, broken clean through and pushed out of line, and her left lung torn by them. A torn lung bleeds heavily, the blood fills the chest and presses on the lung, and every breath gets harder. Could injuries like that affect her ability to talk? Yes. Would someone with them think they were fine? The defense objected that the question called for speculation; the judge overruled it, and the doctor would not say what a person perceives. Broken ribs generally hurt, he said, and blood filling the chest is something you would be aware of, because you would grow short of breath.

"Yeah, I'm fine," is what Cooper said she told him. The State spent five minutes making that harder to believe. It may also be exactly what a frightened 17-year-old says on the side of a road in the first seconds after a fall, before the bleeding catches up with her. The doctor could not say which, and he said so.

"A crushing type mechanism"

And then the opinion this trial will turn on. What caused the broken ribs and the torn lung? Pressure from two opposing surfaces at once: "a crushing type mechanism." Can a fall alone do that? No, he said, because a fall strikes one surface at a time.

The State then gave him a hypothetical. Assume a vehicle traveling about 20 miles an hour, a passenger separating from the passenger side, a fall of three and a half feet to the road. Would impact and rolling on the pavement cause a crushing injury? No. Could a fall break ribs? Yes, it could. But tear the lung like that? He would not expect it. Now assume the same facts, and the rear tire goes over her. Could that cause a crushing injury? Yes. When a person is on the ground and a wheel comes over them, the ground pushes up and the wheel pushes down.

Then the question, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty: what caused Sophie's crushing injuries? "I do believe that she was run over by the wheel of the vehicle." Were those the injuries that killed her? Yes. Cause of death, blunt impact injuries of the torso. Manner of death, homicide, which he explained is a public health classification, not a legal one: a death at the hands of another person, or from another person's hostile or illegal act.

CLIP · LIVE 4:00 PM ET MON NOV 2 Medical Examiner Testifies Sophie Was Run Over by the Vehicle's Wheel in Ouellette's Life360 Trial CASE STORY PART 9 · WATCH NOW Medical Examiner Rules Out a Fall Alone for Sophie's Crushing Injuries in the Life360 Trial

Three things about that answer, before Monday's cross gets to it.

First, notice the shape of it. He was certain about what did not happen: a fall and a roll did not do this. On what did happen, the hypothetical only got him to "could." The "I do believe" came after, and it is an opinion built by elimination. That is a legitimate way for a doctor to reason. It also means everything rides on whether a fall, a roll and a slide are really the only other things that could press a body from two sides. The truck's body, the door, the frame fourteen inches off the road, a 54-foot drag through the seedlings: those are the alternatives I expect the defense to put to him, one at a time.

Second, the speed. The State's hypothetical assumed about 20 miles an hour. That is higher than the State's own reconstructionist, who put the truck at 13 to 15. It is the number the defense tried to put to Bronson as the Life360 figure, the question the State objected to and the defense withdrew. And the Life360 analyst who would supply 20 miles an hour has not testified. A hypothetical to an expert has to rest on facts that are in evidence or will be. The defense did not object. The doctor said speed did not change his answer, which may make the point academic. But it is worth noticing that the State's causation opinion was framed on a number its own witnesses have not given yet.

Third, and this is the one I keep coming back to: the State put the word "tire" in front of the jury through a doctor, without a comparison to any tire. The tread was photographed to scale. A piece of it was cut out and seized. Her clothing has been in the State's hands since that night. The State's own reconstructionist said that when a tire runs someone over, the evidence shows up on the person, the scene or the clothing. Nobody in that courtroom on Friday could say the comparison was ever made.

The judge stopped there. He had promised the jurors he would let them go by 4:30, and it was 4:40. They come back Monday at 9:45, and Dr. Vincent comes back with them. The defense has not asked him a single question yet.

Two State witnesses, one wheel

So here is where the jury sits for the weekend. Two of the State's own witnesses do not agree on the most important fact in the case.

One is the State Police's crash reconstructionist, trained to read a scene for exactly this. He found no evidence the truck struck Sophie and no evidence the rear tire did. He would have put it in his report if he had. The sergeant who processed the truck twice, once with luminol on the undercarriage, found no blood and no hair on any part of it that would have touched her. The other is a medical examiner who did not perform the autopsy, who says to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that only a wheel explains the injuries to her torso.

They can both be telling the truth. The reconstructionist himself said a run-over at low speed does not always leave evidence at the scene, and the State will say the rain washed the truck clean on the drive home. A jury could accept all of that. But possible is the wrong test. The State has to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, and on Friday the gap between those two witnesses had a shape. It was the shape of tests that were not done.

The tread compared with her clothing. The tread compared with the marks on her back. The tire sample sent to a lab, any lab, the FBI's included, and the result brought to court. The necklace tested for DNA. A forensic search of Locust Road. A blood or urine test of the driver, or even the question of whether he had been drinking. Every one of those was available to the State. As of Friday, not one of them has been put in front of this jury.

Part of our job is to show what this jury did not see, and to ask why. I don't know why those tests were not done, or whether some were done and the results are still coming. If they are coming, the State should bring them, because a run-over opinion with a tire comparison behind it is a very different piece of evidence from one without. If they are not coming, the defense gets to stand up in closing and say the State had the truck, the tire, the tread, the clothes and the necklace for two and a half years and decided not to find out. That is a reasonable-doubt argument, and the State built it.

Where Day 2 leaves the State, count by count

This is my read, and it is my opinion, from what was said in that courtroom on Friday.

On count one, the conduct is in. The State said on Thursday that Cooper unlocked Sophie's door while the truck was moving, and on Friday the jury heard him say he did. The State's reconstructionist put the truck at about 13 to 15 when she came out, found no sign it braked, and found her hair clip a hundred feet down the road, nothing like a stop within three feet. I think the first element is close to proved.

The second and third elements, what he knew and whether he simply did not care, moved less than Friday's last hour might make it feel. For the State: he unlocked the door instead of stopping the truck, he put the event on a road where nothing was found, there was a can of spiked Arnold Palmer in his cup holder, and a doctor made "Yeah, I'm fine" harder to believe. For the defense: in his own telling he was trying to help a girl about to be sick, he stopped, got out, went to her, picked her up and drove her home, and he cooperated with police from the moment they came through the door. Extreme indifference is the hardest thing the State has to prove in this case, and I don't think Friday got it there. If the jury ends up somewhere short of first-degree manslaughter, it will be on this element.

On causation, the fourth element, the State had its best hour of the trial, and it came at the very end. A medical examiner told the jury a fall could not do this and a wheel could. That opinion is now three days uncrossed. But the State's own reconstructionist and the sergeant who processed the truck gave the defense the strongest testimony it has had so far, and the State's investigation left the tests that could settle it on the shelf. Causation moved toward the State on the medicine and stayed contested on the physical evidence.

On count two, Sophie was 17, and her blood alcohol was about 0.15. Both proved. The alcohol now has a store, a time and a receipt, and it ended up in the truck. "Gave" still has no witness. The party witnesses are next, and they are where that count lives.

And one more thing I owe you, because we named our coverage after it. This is the Life360 Trial, and after two days not one witness has presented the Life360 data. The heaviest evidence on Friday came from a body camera and an autopsy report. The reconstruction built from those phones is still coming, through the NESPIN analyst and an animation the jury has not seen. When it arrives, it will be landing on a case the medical examiner has already framed.

What Monday has to answer

Court resumes Monday, November 2, at 9:45 a.m., with Dr. Vincent back on the stand. The questions are already plain. What else can press a body from two sides at once? Was the tread, photographed to scale so a lab could reproduce it, ever compared with the marks on Sophie's back or her clothing? How does a wheel go over a girl's torso and leave nothing on the truck? How much of his opinion rests on his own eyes, and how much on the notes of a fellow who is gone and the theory of the investigators who presented to his office? After him, the State has the Life360 analyst, the lead detective and the young people from the party still to call.

If you are catching up, everything from Friday is linked above. The full day without breaks and the day's top moments are here, along with the Day 1 pieces that went up after our Day 1 article.

NO BREAKS EDITION · LIVE 7:00 PM ET SUN NOV 1 The Life360 Trial Day 2, No Breaks Edition: Cooper's Account, Crash Math TOP MOMENTS · WATCH NOW The Life360 Trial: Ouellette Day 2 Top Moments / 10 MPH, No Skid Marks, Run Over by the Wheel

From Day 1, Sophie's family on the stand, each in full: her mother, her father and her brother.

DAY 1 FULL TESTIMONY · WATCH NOW Lynn R: Full Testimony, Sophie's Mother Opens the Life360 Trial Against Cooper Ouellette DAY 1 FULL TESTIMONY · WATCH NOW Scott R.: Full Testimony, Sophie's Father on What Cooper Told Him in the Life360 Trial DAY 1 FULL TESTIMONY · LIVE 3:30 PM ET SUN NOV 1 Jackson R.: Full Testimony, Sophie's Brother on Ouellette's Two Versions in the Life360 Trial DAY 1 NO BREAKS EDITION · WATCH NOW The Life360 Trial Day 1, No Breaks Edition: Sophie's Family, Three Detectives DAY 1 TOP MOMENTS · WATCH NOW The Life360 Trial: Ouellette Day 1 Top Moments / I Was Driving, 20 MPH, the Smell of Beer

Every Case Story part of this trial, in order, lives in one playlist, and it is the best way to follow this case from the first witness to the last.

EVERY PART OF THE CASE STORY, IN ORDER The Life360 Trial: Case Story Trial Podcast playlist

The doctor gave his answer on Friday. On Monday, the defense gets to test it. We'll be there, and so should you.