Defendant’s pal: Will Smith attacked my friend after crash
NEW ORLEANS — Anger and anguish were evident in a New Orleans courtroom Thursday as a friend of the man on trial for killing retired Saints star Will Smith repeatedly insisted that Smith and his friends were the aggressors following an April 9 traffic crash that was followed by heated words and multiple gunshots.
Kevin O’Neal is a longtime friend of second-degree murder defendant Cardell Hayes. And he was a passenger in Hayes’ Hummer when it ran into Smith’s Mercedes SUV.
“He attacked this man from the beginning,” O’Neal said of Smith as he was questioned by Orleans Parish Assistant District Attorney Laura Rodrigue.
Pointing to Hayes, he added: “At no point in time — my God’s honest truth — did I ever see the man get angry or attack anyone at the scene of this crime.”