State, Defense Rest in Trial of Deep Ellum Beating; Closing Arguments on Friday

Closing arguments will be heard Friday morning in the trial of a man accused of brutally beating a woman in Deep Ellum.

The March 2019 confrontation was captured on camera and shocked the downtown Dallas community.

The defendant Austin Shuffield told the judge on Thursday afternoon that he has decided not to testify in his own defense.

L'Daijohnique Lee took the stand Thursday morning and faced several hours of testimony.

Shuffield is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and aggravated serious bodily injury charges in the incident.

If convicted, he could face two to 20 years for the first charge and up to 10 years for the second charge.

Lee wiped away tears on the stand as she watched the 29-second video showing part of the confrontation captured by a bystander.

Lee told prosecutor Russell Wilson she doesn't like watching the video.

The violent confrontation picks up after Shuffield reportedly confronted Lee for driving the wrong way down Elm Street and blocking a parking lot entrance he was trying to exit.

Shuffield told police an employee at a hostel across the street told him Lee had been using drugs in her car, according to a police interview shown to jurors.

Lee denied using drugs but admitted to being intoxicated behind the wheel.

Shuffield, accompanied by his attorney at the time, was asked by police why he went to his truck to retrieve a pistol.

"Because she threatened my life," he said. "She informed me that she was going to call up her friends, her boys and they were going to come shoot me up."

Lee denied the claim during a sometimes-contentious back-and-forth with Shuffield's defense attorney, Rebecca Pearlstein.

The confrontation quickly turned violent when Shuffield slapped Lee's phone away, leading her to hit Shuffield who then proceeded to punch the woman several times in the head.

Shuffield later told police he slapped the phone fearing she was going to call her friends to come shoot him.

He added that his instinct to fight back was because he had been picked on in high school.

"I went to high school, got picked on a lot, got into a few fights," he said during the interview. "Looking back now, self-defense probably one hit would've been fine, but I just kind of reverted back to being hit before."

Lee admitted to smashing Shuffield's truck windows following the attack claiming she wanted to call attention to the situation because she was alone in the parking lot.

Supporters were outraged in 2019 when Dallas police intended to charge Lee with a felony for damaging Shuffield's truck.

The district attorney's office did not accept the case and the charges were dropped.

Shuffield's defense team rested their case after briefly showing jurors a short clip of police body camera video in which Shuffield told police Lee used a racial slur against him as she called someone on the phone.