Apple Store Employees Heard Lululemon Attack

After a morning of bloody testimony from an evidence technician, the jury in the Lululemon Athletica murder trial heard from two employees at the Apple Store next door, who heard the incident.

Jana Svrzo testified she heard loud hysterical noises, yelling and screaming coming from the Bethesda Row Lululemon from 10:10 p.m. until 10:19 p.m. March 11, the night Jayna Murray was killed by her coworker, Brittany Norwood. She heard two distinct voices, one saying, "Talk to me. Don't do this." That was followed by more high-pitched screaming and someone calling out, "God help me. Please help me."

During cross-examination, Norwood's lawyer Doug Wood asked Svrzo that if someone is yelling "help me," wouldn't she have gone to help. She replied she doesn’t know what she would have done.

Apple store manager Ricardo Rios also testified to hearing the yelling next door.

Surveillance video showed the employees listening at the wall between the stores.

A Lululemon employee testified that she worked March 11, and Norwood was wearing a different pair of pants for work than what she was found in the next morning, when she claimed to have been a victim, attacked alongside Murray by a tall man and a short man. Authorities said she put on size 14 men’s sneakers to make bloody footprints to support her story.

Traces of blood were found in sinks at the store, an evidence technician testified. Prosecutors suggested Norwood changed out of bloody clothing and washed the sneakers used to make footprints in one of the sinks.

Elia Rab, another Lululemon employee, testified Norwood called her the night of the attack at 9:51 p.m. asking for Jayna Murray’s cell phone number because Norwood had left her wallet in the store. Rab suggested she call the store manager, who lived right across the street from the store, but Norwood wanted Murray to return to the store.

When she did, she double parked, authorities said. The car was found about two blocks away, and blood from both Murray and Norwood was found on the gear shift, the steering wheel and the driver’s side door, the evidence technician testified.

An evidence technician also testified to blood splattered higher than six feet on the walls, a sign of the violent nature of the fight.

During cross-examination, Norwood’s defense suggested six-to-eight weapons may not have been used in the fight and that those items may all have been bloody because they were collected together as evidence.

Norwood's defense is that she killed Murray when she lost control during an argument, so it wasn’t premeditated first-degree murder.