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Not far from the toy stand and the high chairs, the last gunshots rang out from the floor of a Waikiki McDonald’s.

As Kollin Elderts’ body fell limp on top of Christopher Deedy, the federal agent leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

The tension drained from his limbs.

Deedy pulled himself from underneath a now motionless Elderts. The agent’s shirt and shorts were marked with the blood of a man he had never met until minutes earlier.

He walked away from the high chairs toward his slippers, which had been knocked from his feet during the fight.

That’s when he stopped, turned back toward the body on the floor and tried to halt Elderts’ bleeding. It was 2:42 a.m. He had just shot the young man with his Glock 26 and, suddenly, he was trying to save his life.

Deedy was still barefoot when the police and EMTs arrived. That is when Deedy again rose from the ground and moved toward his slippers.

“I just stood up and walked away,” Deedy explained on the stand.

He was reliving an odd sequence in a tragic incident that left a 23-year-old Kailua man dead. It will also likely be revisited by the prosecution during cross-examination.

Deedy testified Wednesday that he was in a fight for his life inside that McDonalds — going frame-by-frame through surveillance video and cell phone footage — but prosecutors believe he could have left before the violent confrontation.

Deedy is a U.S. State Department special agent, who is charged with second-degree murder for killing Elderts on Nov. 5, 2011. The agent is claiming self-defense, which suggests that he couldn’t have retreated before the situation turned violent.

In his second day of testimony, Deedy justified pulling the trigger and endured the beginning of his cross-examination. The prosecution took its first opportunity to directly poke holes in Deedy’s claims of self defense.

’I Prayed He Would Stop’

The day began with Deedy continuing to describe the moments in which Elderts became aggressive leading up to the shooting. Deedy later went into detail about how he believed Elderts was trying to grab the gun from his hands.

Such points are critical if Deedy’s defense team is going to convince the jury that the federal agent’s use of deadly force was justified. Deedy can’t be the one who provoked the attack. He also must have feared for his life or at least serious bodily injury.

Deedy told the jury Wednesday that he had no intentions of shooting Elderts that November night. All the agent wanted to do was to stop him and his friend, Shane Medeiros, from picking on another customer.

But as Deedy has said throughout his testimony, tension was high and the fight escalated quickly, especially from the moment when he showed his badge and tried to kick Elderts’ leg out from under him, to prevent the young man from getting too close.

Deedy testified that he decided to pull out his gun after Elderts threw him to the ground. In fact, that was part of his federal agent training. When that happens, Deedy said, he was trained to rise, pull his weapon and give a command for the attacker to stop whatever it is they are doing.

In this case, he said Elderts threw him to the ground and joined Medeiros in kicking Deedy’s former college roommate in the head. Deedy said he saw blood coming from his friend’s face.

“I know I had to do something to stop this,” Deedy said. “I stood up, put both hands forward and I said, ‘Stop. I’ll shoot.’”

At this point, Deedy said, Elderts turned and advanced toward the agent. Deedy put out his left arm, reached for the gun on his right hip and told him to freeze.

“I prayed he would stop,” Deedy said.

It was at this moment, the federal agent said, that time appeared to slow down. All the commotion from the the shouting and the fighting was drowned out. It was “dead silent.” He and Elderts were face to face.

“For me, I felt like we were standing there for a long time,” Deedy said. “He looked at me and then, with his left hand, he reached for my gun.”

This is when Deedy said he knew he had to shoot because if Elderts was able to get the weapon he could then use it against him.

There is disagreement over when exactly Deedy fired his gun. But what’s known is that he shot off three rounds, with one hitting Elderts in the chest.

Deedy said that shot came when he was on his back, on the McDonald’s floor, as Elderts was trying to grab the gun from his hand. He said Elderts was straddling him with his armed raised in the air to punch the agent, but instead the young man fell down on top of him.

Why Didn’t Deedy Leave?

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Janice Futa, in her first opportunity at cross-examining Deedy, questioned why he was even in the fight.

She challenged the federal agent’s decision to intervene when Elderts and Medeiros were allegedly picking on another customer, saying it didn’t appear as if they had violated any laws that Deedy would need to enforce.

Futa also asked whether the McDonald’s security guard and other customers were able to calm the situation down enough to give Deedy and his friends an opportunity to leave the restaurant without having to resort to violence. Elderts, after all, was sitting down at a table when Deedy first approached him and the young man did not appear to be harassing the McDonald’s customer anymore. “At this point in time you could have just walked out with (your friend) Jessica West and not put anyone in danger, is that correct?” Futa asked.

Deedy responded that after he showed his badge he felt like Elderts re-directed any aggression he initially felt toward the customer to the federal agent. And this made Deedy question whether he could safely leave the restaurant.

“He had just threatened to hurt me,” the agent testified. “If I had walked to his left or his right I don’t know what would have happened.”

Deedy also said he worried what would happen to those he left behind if he withdrew from the restaurant. Would Elderts and Medeiros continue bullying? And would that have escalated into violence, perhaps even as a result of Deedy’s earlier intervention?

“I believe it would have been irresponsible to leave at the moment,” Deedy said. “The reason I believe it would have been irresponsible to leave is because when I respond to something as a law enforcement officer I have a duty to follow through with that response.”