‘I didn’t want to get shot in the face.’ Mark Dial testifies that he thought Eddie Irizarry had a gun when he shot him

Former Philadelphia Police Officer Mark Dial told a jury Wednesday that he believed he was staring down the barrel of a gun and was about to be shot in the face when he pulled the trigger of his weapon and fired six times at Eddie Irizarry in 2023, killing him.

In emotional testimony, Dial said that as he approached Irizarry’s car on that August day, he heard his partner yell “Gun!” and saw Irizarry holding what looked like a firearm up to the window.

“It was black and metallic. It had a shine to it and the end of it looked like it was pointed right at me,” he said.

Irizarry was actually holding a seven-inch folding knife.

Dial’s testimony on the third day of his trial on charges of third-degree murder and related crimes marked the first time the officer has spoken publicly about his decision to shoot Irizarry, 27.

As the officer testified, his attorney, Brian McMonagle, asked whether he wanted to fire his gun that day — something he said he had not done during his five years on the force working in Kensington and North and West Philadelphia.

“No,” Dial said, beginning to cry.

But Dial said he did so “because I didn’t want to get shot in the face.”

Dial, 29, said he was driving with his partner, Michael Morris, through North Philadelphia that afternoon when they saw Irizarry’s Toyota Corolla speed past them at a stoplight. They followed his car for a few blocks, but did not turn on their patrol lights or sirens to pull him over.

The officers saw Irizarry quickly turn the wrong way down the 100 block of East Willard Street and pulled up next to him after he parked. The officers immediately got out of their cruiser and drew their weapons.

Morris, who was driving, was the first to look into Irizarry’s car, and saw that he was holding a knife at the side of his leg.

Morris said he told Irizarry to show him his hands, and then yelled that Irizarry had a knife.

But Dial said he heard his partner yell: “Gun!”

As Dial ran around the front of Irizarry’s car, he said, he saw Irizarry reaching around the side of his body. He couldn’t see what he was grabbing at, he said, because of a glare on the car windows.

Then, as Dial came up to the window next to where Irizarry was sitting, Irizarry raised his hand up with the knife. Dial said it looked like a gun.

“Show me your hands!“ Dial yelled. “I’ll f— shoot you!” He then almost immediately opened fire, running backward as prosecutors say he fired six shots.

Dial said he retreated because he was trying to take cover behind his cruiser and “didn’t want to get shot.” And as Irizarry bled in his car, he said, he continued to tell him to show him his hands because “I didn’t know if he still had the gun in his hands.”

Dial, whose father and grandfather were Philadelphia police officers, wept as he spoke of trying to save Irizarry by pulling him from the car and rushing him to Temple University Hospital.

When he learned later that day that Irizarry had died, he said, “it was one of the worst feelings of my life.”

Assistant District Attorney Clarke Beljean, who has said Dial’s partner only ever yelled “knife,” questioned how the officer could have heard something different. Even when listening to Morris on the video in court this week, Beljean asked, “you don’t hear, ‘Knife, knife?’“

“No,” Dial said. “I hear ‘gun.’”

Dial was among the final witnesses to testify before prosecutors and defense attorneys presented their closing arguments.

McMonagle asked jurors to put themselves in Dial’s shoes as a young cop approaching a car in a part of the city plagued by shootings and seeing someone fidgeting in his seat, then hearing the officer next to him yell: “Gun!”

McMonagle picked up the knife Irizarry was holding and pointed it at the jury.

“Imagine when you see it, your whole life passes in front of you,” he said. “Because that’s the way it is.”

Dial was so convinced he was about to be shot, the lawyer said, that he patted his ballistic vest as he ran backward after shooting to check if he had been hit.

The medical examiner later found that Irizarry had cocaine in his system at the time of the shooting. McMonagle said that explains his irrational decision to point a weapon at a police officer, which he called “as close to suicide by cop as I‘ve ever seen.”

“Mark Dial didn’t shoot out of malice. He shot out of fear,” he said. ”Mark Dial was not indifferent to Mr. Irizarry‘s life, he actually tried to save him.“

Beljean, in his final plea to the jurors, cast doubt on Dial‘s contention that he believed Irizarry had a gun. He pointed to testimony from a police sergeant who interviewed Dial at the hospital moments after the shooting.

“He said he saw the door open, he saw the weapon, and then he fired,” Sgt. Michael Bernard said.

That Dial said “weapon” raised questions of his honesty, the prosecutor said.

“Do you sit here today and truly believe that if Mark Dial actually believed he saw a gun he wouldn’t have said, ‘Sarge, the gun was in my face’?” Beljean asked.

“Dial fired through a closed window of a locked car at a person who made no attempt to get out. All within six seconds,” he said.

For all that and more, he said, Dial should be convicted of murder.

After court dismissed for the day, Irizarry’s family stood outside in the light rain, nervous but prepared to accept the outcome of the trial.

“It’s 50-50, but I pray to God that they put themselves in our shoes,” Eddie Irizarry said in Spanish of the jurors in his son’s trial.

For Maria Irizarry, rewatching the footage of her brother’s death has been extremely painful.

“Everybody else is just looking at what’s going on, but you’re just looking at his face,” she said. “The way you can see his soul left his body.“

The jury began deliberating Wednesday afternoon and was set to continue Thursday.