A former police officer accused of killing his pregnant lover sobbed on the witness stand Monday that he accidentally struck her when she wouldn't let him out of her house.
"I didn't mean to hurt her," Bobby Cutts Jr. testified, clutching a handful of white tissues.
Cutts, 30, said he was at Jessie Davis' home to pick up his 2 1/2-year-old son Blake and was telling her to hurry. He said Davis grabbed him and told him he couldn't leave so he pulled his arm away and threw his elbow back, striking her in the throat and causing her to fall.
Cutts could receive the death penalty if convicted of killing Davis, who was nearly full term with a female fetus when she died last June. Cutts said he performed CPR, then tried to use bleach to revive her — a large bleach stain was found in her room.
"She wasn't responding and I knew she was dead," Cutts testified.
He said he recalled thinking, "No way this is happening, this is not happening."
Under questioning from his own attorney, Fernando Mack, Cutts said he didn't know why he failed to call police.
"How do you explain that?" he said raising his voice. "I just wanted to go get my son. I didn't want anybody to get hurt."
Cutts testified that he didn't want Blake to see his mother, so he put Davis' body in the bed of her truck and went to a friend's house while the boy slept.
Later, he said he drove around in a panic, not knowing what to do.
"I can't keep driving around with her body in the back of this truck," he said _ so when he saw a dirt road leading to a park, he pulled in.
"Did you leave Jessie at that location?" Mack said.
"Yeah," Cutts said between sobs.
Thousands searched for the 26-year-old Davis for more than a week, until Cutts led authorities to the body wrapped in a comforter in a park.
Prosecutors said Cutts was feeling the pressure of his crumbling marriage, financial debt and supporting several children. The state rested its case Friday, with closing arguments scheduled for Tuesday after the defense wraps up.
The former police officer in Canton is on trial on aggravated murder and other charges.
In other testimony, Kylie Graham, a criminalist for Stark County crime lab, testified that she couldn't confirm blood on gloves, a sweat shirt and other clothing collected from Cutts' house on June 20, five days after Davis was reported missing.
Cutts' attorneys told the jury during opening statements that there was no evidence linking Cutts to Davis' killing. Prosecutors warned the jury that common sense, not DNA evidence, would determine the case.
Cutts' friend, Myisha Ferrell, is the case's key witness and testified earlier that Cutts demonstrated to her that he choked Davis with his arm.