On the foggy night Jonathan Nelson was killed, a police officer found a revolver in the grass along a nearby road, the officer told jurors Tuesday.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer Nathan Watkins testified at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse in the murder trial of Tahashi Matthews, who is accused in the Nov. 19, 2009, shooting.

Watkins said he had earlier heard that Nelson died on the way to the hospital, so began a search for the weapon near where the shooting occurred, he recalled.

His search of the crime scene at a University-area apartment complex revealed nothing, he told jurors, so he searched along Margie Ann Boulevard. There he found a gun about 10 feet from the road, he testified.

Witness Roy Patterson, a CMPD crime scene investigator, told jurors he found four spent casings in the recovered revolver.

On Monday, prosecution witnesses recalled what happened on the night of the shooting.

Quinton Osborne, Nelson’s cousin, told jurors that he, then 22, and Nelson, 18, were hanging out in Osborne’s car in the parking lot outside their apartment.

A few minutes later, he recalled, the car door was yanked open. He said a man wearing a ski mask fired twice, shouted vague demands and continued shooting as Osborne sped away. Nelson died that night.

Crime scene investigator Michelle Scheuerman told jurors Tuesday that she examined Osborne’s black Lexus the next day. The car had blood stains, a broken window, a bullet hole and a projectile fragment, she said.

Expert witness Dr. Thomas Owens, a forensic pathologist and medical examiner who performed Nelson’s autopsy, told jurors Nelson died from a gunshot wound to the chest.

The bullet entered Nelson’s chest on the left side, puncturing his heart and right lung, which filled with blood, Owens said.

“It is a rapidly lethal injury,” he said. “It might have taken 30 seconds to a minute or two, but certainly not longer than that.”

Prosecutors also played recorded phone calls from Matthews’ time in the Mecklenburg jail after the shooting. Most of the words were indecipherable, but a few emerged.

“I’m serious, I’m giving my life over to Jesus Christ now,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt nobody and I did.”

The trial is expected to run through the end of the week.

Matthews, 35, is charged with first-degree murder, two counts of attempted armed robbery and possession of a firearm by a felon.

If convicted of first-degree murder, he would be sentenced to life without parole.