Witnesses in lululemon murder trial describe grim crime scene

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Store employees, rescue workers and police who testified on the opening day of the Brittany Norwood murder trial today painted a grim picture of the murder scene at the lululemon athletic store in Bethesda. “Something just didn’t look right,” said Chevy Chase resident Rachel Oertli, a lululemon manager, describing her arrival at the clothing store just before 8 a.m. March 12, when she found the door unlocked. During Oertli’s testimony, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy played a clip of a 911 call Oertli made just minutes after she and Ryan Haugh, a passerby who offered to help Oertli search the store, found former store employees Jayna Murray, who was dead, and Norwood bleeding in the back of the store. Norwood has since been charged with first-degree murder. “I’m the manager of the store, and I’m so scared that one of my girls is hurt,” Oertli is heard telling the police dispatcher through tears in the second of her two 911 calls. The calls were placed at 8:10 and 8:15 a.m. March 12. While Oertli stayed near the front of the store, Haugh entered the back area and located both Murray, whose body was lying facedown in a pool of blood blocking a doorway to the back hallway, and Norwood, who was lying on her back in a store bathroom with her hands and feet bound in zip ties, Haugh told the jury during his testimony. Haugh said Murray was unresponsive when he briefly touched her thigh through the door, but he described Norwood as breathing and making low moaning noises. Also present at trial today were Officer Christin Knuth and Cpl. Russell Rankin, two of the first Montgomery County police to arrive at the scene. Knuth arrived first and cleared the store at gunpoint, locating both bodies, and Rankin arrived shortly after to back her up, helping her enter the back room and check Murray and Norwood for vital signs, the officers said. Norwood did not speak to either of the officers or any of the paramedics who eventually took her to Suburban Hospital that day, according to witness testimony. Neither Knuth nor Rankin considered Norwood a suspect in the case at the time, but county detectives soon began noticing holes in Norwood’s account that she and Murray were attacked, beaten and sexually assaulted by a pair of masked men, McCarthy said in his opening arguments today.