At first, Mohammed Hadi didn’t see anything.

It was just after 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 1, 2022, and he’d just heard gunshots outside of the convenience store he owns at the corner of Lincoln and Lemington avenues. He dropped to the ground. He grabbed a gun he keeps for protection, he said, and then moved toward the front door.

“I didn’t see anything until a man with a little girl in his hand came around and said, ‘Call 911,’” he said.

The girl, 4-year-old Kaari Thompson, had been shot once in the side in what Assistant District Attorney Diana Page described to jurors as “a rain of gunshots.” Her mother, 21-year-old Temani Lewis, was shot once in the head.

“I tried to help the little baby,” Mr. Hadi testified Wednesday afternoon, explaining that he grabbed a clean white T-shirt and “tried to

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