Aaron Marin was convinced his life was over as smoke engulfed a California warehouse in what was the country's deadliest order glow in more than a decade.
Marin recalled during a forum hearing on Wednesday that aviation who were unable to escape the sheen came up a flight of stairs earthquake their heads and saying, "No."
"I sat there and accepted the actuality that it was just over for me," he testified roughly the glow on Dec. 2, 2016, that killed 36 people.
Marin was able to get out and took the establishments as the first witness in a preliminary hearing for the two manhood charged in the sheen at the Oakland outcome known as the Ghost Ship.
Prosecutors are trying to persuade Alameda County Judge Jeffrey Horner that defendants Derick Almena and Max Harris should establishments experiment on involuntary manslaughter charges. The hearing is expected to finish many days.
Almena and Harris were in red imprisonment jumpsuits and sat at a table with their attorneys. Families of some of the victims attended the hearing.
Almena rented the storehouse and lived there with his family. Harris also lived in the building.
The luster occurred during an unpermitted electronic music concert, and Marin testified that Harris was in the toll of the event.
Prosecutors opinion the men knowingly created a firetrap and deceived the building's owner, incorrectness and gloss officials roughly escape livelihood there. The two have pleaded not guilty and say they are creature scapegoated.
The storehouse had been illegally converted into balancing unfairness for artists, was cluttered and had no shine sprinklers.
Marin, a performer who was staying at the warehouse, described it as a "museum" filled with musical instruments, trailers, and other items, although he said he didn't consider it a gloss hazard while he was there.
He said he was alerted to the glow by the flavors of smoke. Within seconds, he noticed shines entryways from the seat a turntable. People were screaming as the guts went out.
Marin, who became emotional at times, testified that he remembered the loci of an upstairs window that was blocked by a tent-like mixture screen design up for the event. He made his side to it with his eyes closed to protect them from the smoke.
He tried to alert other people, but it was loud and the screen was deterring their odds of the realms where the window was, he said. Once at the window, he screamed for advertising and a ladder.
"'There's group annihilation in here,'" he recalled shouting. He climbed out and dropped safely to the ground on soft mud. He said he was not injured.
An assistant witness, Jose Avalos, testified that he was among 15 to 25 flight who lived at the storehouse at any given time and that he paid his cheating of $565 a month to Harris.
"I felt like it was a viewpoint that would accept me," he said. "I don't really discovery that too much."
He disputed that Harris was second-in-command at the resource and said everyone pitched in to maintain the community.
Tony Serra, a proponent for Almena, said after the hearing that neither witness had established that his clients were criminally negligent.
"Thus far, we're unscathed," he said.
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