Teen testifies suspect threatened to blow up Castle West

A Colorado Springs teenager on Monday testified that she heard the suspect in a deadly arson make threats about blowing up the building minutes before the apartment she was in started burning.

Vanessa Farris, now 15, said she was staying overnight with a friend at the Castle West Apartments complex Jan. 15, 2007, when she heard the threats.

Farris' testimony came at the start of the eighth week of suspect Derrick "Nicky" Johnson's first-degree murder and arson trial.

Under questioning by Deputy District Attorney Donna Billek, Farris said she was staying in apartment B-19 with friend Stephanie Dorman and Johnson's ex-girlfriend and mother of his infant daughter Najua Bell-Jackson.

Investigators later determined the fire started outside apartment B-19.

Johnson had been repeatedly calling and text-messaging Bell-Jackson because she was attempting to break off the relationship, Farris said.

"Did you hear him say he was going to blow the building up?" Billek asked.

"Yes," Farris said.

"How long was that before the fire, about 15 or 20 minutes?" Billek asked.

"Yes," she said.

Farris also confirmed that Johnson threatened to spread gas on the apartment door.

"It was right before the fire. ... I recognized the voice as Nicky's," Farris said.

Investigators determined that gasoline had been used to accelerate the massive fire, which destroyed the 135-unit complex at Uintah Street and Academy Boulevard.

Farris, who was sleeping on the floor near the front door, said she saw "lights coming from the front door. I looked up and there were flames coming from under the door.

"They were coming from the hallway."

She jumped from the balcony, into the freezing cold night, wearing only a T-shirt and shorts with no shoes.

When Billek asked why she didn't get any shoes, Farris responded: "I wasn't trying to die."

Farris said Dorman was being evicted from the apartment, so there was little furniture in it. She also said there were plastic gas cans on the balcony because Dorman had run out of gas for her car a few days earlier.

Defense attorneys Rick Levinson and Shimon Kohn have told jurors that residents of B-19 could have used those cans to start the fire because they were upset about being evicted.

Joe Santoyo, 52, and Clemente Perez Salgado, 32, were killed in the blaze, which left hundreds homeless.

Several of those residents testified Monday about escaping the blaze and losing everything they had, including all the gifts from Christmas weeks earlier.

The trial, which is expected to last several more weeks, continues Tuesday.