The first week of the murder trial of Karen Read was dominated by first responders to the scene where Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe lay dead or dying on the front lawn of a Canton home.

“She kept saying, ‘This is all my fault. This is my fault. I did this,’” Canton Police Officer Steven Saraf said during his testimony.

Saraf was the first authority at the scene at around 6 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, when he said he saw three women — Read among them — surrounding a still body toward the flagpole on the left-hand side of the front yard of 34 Fairview Road in Canton.

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In all, 12 people testified in the first four days of the trial that began April 29 in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham. Testimony began with O’Keefe’s younger brother Paul O’Keefe and his wife Erin O’Keefe before then running through the testimonies of the first two Canton cops at the scene and eight Canton Fire Department paramedics.

First on the stand was Paul O’Keefe, whose voice broke as he described the injuries to his brother’s face when he saw him at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton that morning.

John O’Keefe was “pretty banged up,” Paul O’Keefe said. “What really stood out to me were his eyes. It looked like there were ping pong balls under his lids, they were that swollen.”

Erin O’Keefe took the stand next. Both of them testified that they had a fine relationship with Read and Erin O’Keefe even said that Read had expressed an interest in remaining friends if she and O’Keefe were ever to break up.

Openings

Read, 44, of Mansfield, was indicted June 9, 2022, on charges of second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision causing death.

In opening arguments, prosecutor Adam Lally and defense attorney David Yannetti laid out differing accounts of what happened.

Lally said that Read struck O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV in front of the Canton home following a drunken argument and a night out together — with others who were waiting for the couple in the home — at two Canton bars. He said the couple’s relationship had been mired in fighting and jealousy for at least a month before O’Keefe died.

Lally closed his opening with a description of the hard evidence he intends to introduce: pieces of Read’s Lexus’ broken tail light, which he said broke when Read smashed into O’Keefe in reverse at more than 20 mph; as well as shards of a cocktail glass, much like the one O’Keefe was seen walking out of the bar with, embedded in her vehicle’s bumper.

Jurors viewed the house and the Lexus on Friday.

Yannetti countered in his own opening that evidence was planted there and that jurors will learn it wasn’t there at the initial walk-through of the scene. He promised that jurors would quickly come to question the “shoddy and biased investigation.”

“Karen Read was framed. Her car never struck John O’Keefe. She did not cause his death, and that means that somebody else did,” Yannetti said at the start.

Utterances at the scene

All the first responders who have testified so far described Read that night in the same way: hysterical and, as Canton Fire Lt. Gregory Woodbury described her on Friday, “obviously experiencing a lot of emotions.”

But it was her utterances at the scene where testimonies differed.

Several witnesses shared Saraf’s recollection that Read made incriminating, responsibility-taking statements as she paced around O’Keefe’s body that morning.

Paramedic Timothy Nuttall on Tuesday said that he heard Read repeatedly state, “I hit him.” Lead paramedic at the scene Anthony Flematti testified on Thursday that he heard the same thing.

So, too, did paramedic Katie McLaughlin, who testified of her encounter with Read: “She said ‘I hit him.’”

But others recalled Read making less-incriminating statements. Canton Fire Lt. Francis Walsh testified Thursday that Read was “screaming and crying” and repeatedly asking, “Is he alive?”

Similarly, paramedic Matthew Kelly testified that he heard Read screaming, “He’s dead. He’s (expletive) dead!”

Woodbury was one of the paramedics who also responded to a call later that morning to “Section 12” Read, which meant that police identified her as being in a condition where she could be a danger to herself or others.

“She kept repeating ‘Is he dead? Is he dead?’” he testified, adding that she kept referring to O’Keefe as her “husband.”

Paramedic Daniel Whitley, also on the Section 12 call, testified that “She said, ‘I don’t want to live anymore if my husband dies.’”

Defense attorneys Yannetti and Alan Jackson questioned the accuracy of the memories of several of the first responders and presented evidence that their stories had either changed or that they had misremembered something else about the night — like the clothes O’Keefe was wearing — that would undermine the witness’ recollection of the utterances.

But the most fraught cross-examination so far in the trial was Jackson’s cross of McLaughlin.

Jackson presented photos that indicate McLaughlin was friends with Caitlin Albert, the daughter of Brian Albert, then-owner of the 34 Fairview Road, and the principal figure in the defense’s theory of someone else killing O’Keefe and framing Read.

Judge Beverly Cannone did not allow the photos or social media friends list to be presented to the jury, but Jackson was still able to question McLaughlin about it. McLaughlin said she was merely an “acquaintance” of Caitlin Albert’s and that they weren’t actual “friends.”

The trial is set to resume on Monday.

Karen Read whispers to attorney Alan Jackson in court after recess at Norfolk County Superior Court in Dedham, Thursday, May 2, 2024. Read is charged in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend. (David McGlynn/New York Post via AP, Pool)