YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown Police Lt. Robert Gentile spent much of the day on the witness stand Thursday in the aggravated murder trial of Samuel L. Byrd Jr., 69, explaining the reasons he said he recognized the man captured on Shell gas station surveillance video shooting Keimone L. Black, 29, to death in a car parked at gas pumps about 3 a.m. June 15.

Gentile was a detective sergeant at the time of the killing and was lead detective in the case.

After Gentile’s testimony was complete, the jury heard closing arguments and started to deliberate Thursday. After several hours, they went home for the night and will return to deliberate again today.

Gentile saw surveillance video at the gas station showing a man walking up to the door of the gas station, pulling on the locked door, then walking toward two cars near the pumps. He fired shots into the car on the left through the passenger window and then fled.

“At the time, I knew it was an older black male,” Gentile testified under questioning by Assistant Prosecutor Rob Andrews. Gentile had no suspect when he left the gas station after 60 to 90 minutes there, he said.

Gentile went to the police station to interview a man who lived in a house close to the gas station. The man had video cameras that captured a car that parked along Dickson Street just before the killing and left shortly afterwards.

At about 6 or 7 a.m., Gentile and another detective took the man back home, and they looked at the videos. The other detective found a “fresh” cigarette outside in the area where the car had been, and the cigarette was collected.

Later, at the police station, Gentile was able to view the “video from the Shell gas station from all the different angles,” Gentile testified. “On my computer in my office I had the ability to zoom in at different angles and slow it down, and I was able to recognize who the individual was,” Gentile testified.

“Who was that person,” Andrews asked.

“Samuel Byrd,” Gentile said. He explained that he had met Byrd three or four months earlier. And he knew that Byrd lived on Ensley Drive in Campbell, but Gentile also knew a woman Byrd knew on East Avondale Avenue on Youngstown’s South Side.

Gentile said he recognized Byrd’s face from a camera angle inside the store pointed at the front door, where the suspect had gone before walking out to the pumps.

Gentile also noticed that the shooter had “an issue with his wrist.” Gentile said that when Byrd does not hold his left wrist up against something, he can’t hold it straight, demonstrating by pushing his wrist forward at about a 90 degree angle.

“His wrist was curled up like this when he was shooting,” Gentile said. Gentile also saw the wrist curled up when the shooter was seen walking around at the gas station, Gentile said.

Gentile also said he noticed “specific shoes” on the gunman. Later in the testimony, a still image was shown from a video of the shoes Byrd was wearing while at work at the Boardman Walmart.

Gentile said a fellow detective could tell from the videos that the vehicle that parked on Dickson was a 1995 to 1999 dark colored Dodge Stratus. The car was missing a front hub cap. Gentile checked Mahoning and four other nearby counties and only five of them were registered, one dark colored. The owner of the vehicle had a connection to the East Avondale address, Gentile said.

Police arrested Byrd as he left the Boardman Inn on Market Street in Boardman, and Byrd spoke to Gentile at the Youngstown Police Department. The interview was videotaped, and prosecutors showed still images of Byrd in the interview room, with his left wrist bent as Gentile described.

Gentile also allowed Byrd to smoke in the interview room as Gentile watched Byrd on video from another room. Byrd left his cigarette dangle in his mouth the way the suspect in the killing did.

“I observed the cigarette hanging out of his mouth the way it was at the gas station,” Gentile testified.