Kevin O'Neal was nearly four hours into his testimony Thursday and locked in yet another combative exchange with Orleans Parish prosecutor Laura Cannizzaro Rodrigue.

O'Neal had been riding in the passenger seat next to Cardell Hayes the April night that Hayes killed former Saints star Will Smith and left his wife, Racquel Smith, screaming on the pavement with bullet wounds to both legs.

O'Neal sat leaning forward on the witness stand Thursday in a gray suit, tie and glasses, his hair tied back.

As Rodrigue grilled him about how Smith's widow would have to celebrate the birthday of one of her children this week without her husband, O'Neal shot back: "Did not her husband bring ... on his own demise?"

The remark drew wails from Racquel Smith and another woman who sat among her supporters, sending a buzz through a packed courtroom.

Seemingly caught off guard by the reaction to his remark — "I'm just asking," he cut in — O'Neal quickly turned to the jury sitting a few feet away and launched a furious defense of himself and Hayes.

Will Smith "attacked this man from the beginning to the end of the situation," he said, referring to Hayes. "At no time did I ever see this man be irate or aggressive. ... It's automatic chaos and hostility, all brought toward us. We never left the vicinity of our vehicle, nor did we insinuate any violent intent toward anyone out there even after we are attacked repeatedly."

O'Neal said Smith repeatedly threw his wife aside and that he broke free of several other people who fought to restrain him, charging at Hayes in the moments before the local tow-truck driver fired eight .45-caliber bullets into him the night of April 9.

Prosecutors say Hayes fired in vengeance, first shooting Smith in the side and then stepping forward and pumping seven more bullets into him from relatively close range as the 34-year-old father of three retreated to his car.

Hayes claims it was self-defense, with his attorneys saying he fired only after Smith told him he was going for his own gun, then reached into the glove box in his SUV.

O'Neal said he didn't hear any of that exchange, or see the shooting that followed. He said that as Smith charged at Hayes, he reached out to hold back the retired defensive lineman — "Homey, chill out" — but that two other men then rushed from behind him to get to Hayes.

One of them, who had ripped off his shirt, swung at him, he said.

"At no point in time, my God's honest truth, did I see this man (Hayes) get angry or be aggressive," O'Neal went on in his friend's defense. "At no point in time, in any of this, did we ever become high-style or irate with anyone. Myself and Mr. Hayes both tried diligently to calm the situation down. I pleaded with the two guys. I pleaded with Mr. Smith."

Later, he added, "I wouldn't go this far to be lying. Not to the world. Not to anyone. Not even for my best friend."

But O'Neal, the lone witness to take the stand during a four-hour morning session as the trial reached its fourth day Thursday, spent much of his testimony addressing inconsistencies in his previous statements — to authorities, to a camera-holding bystander at the scene and in a series of interviews he gave to national media before the murder trial.

At one point, Rodrigue asked him about a purported comment he'd made on a video online, describing Hayes' lead defense attorney, John Fuller, as a "sell-out" and a "nobody who gets people off on technicalities when they're guilty."

That prompted Fuller to call angrily and repeatedly for a mistrial. Criminal District Court Judge Camille Buras denied the motion.

O'Neal's account differs vastly from those presented earlier in the trial by Racquel Smith and the couple who were riding with the Smiths that night. The couple included Richard Hernandez, the man who tore off his shirt after getting out of Smith's Mercedes SUV following a three-car collision.

That crash came a few blocks away from where Smith — after dining and drinking with his wife and friends — apparently had tapped Hayes' Hummer H2 from behind. Prosecutors have argued that Hayes then rammed the Smiths' vehicle intentionally before stepping out with a handgun.

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"We were trying to get a visible enough picture of the license plate information," O'Neal said earlier of Hayes' decision to follow Smith as the ex-Saint drove away from the initial bump. "Before we made impact, (Hayes) was slowing down, hitting the brakes. He was mashing 'em."

Prosecutors have promised evidence from the vehicles' data recorders will show otherwise, that Hayes only tapped the brakes before impact.

But O'Neal was forced to account for several comments he made previously to both police and media, including a remark that he felt he and Hayes could easily have won a street fight against Smith and his smaller male companions — Hernandez and his brother-in-law, Jonathan Whipple.

Rodrigue hammered O'Neal over that comment, and another one in which she said he had remarked that he only became "really afraid" after the gunshots rang out and he grabbed his own gun from the Hummer.

"Me having confidence in my ability to defend myself has nothing to do with the actions that actually happened out there," he responded, noting that Hayes may have been reacting to his own fear.

O'Neal told police that Hernandez swung at him and backed up, "probably scared." On the witness stand, he said he was being facetious in his interview with police hours after the shooting, after which the cops released him.

O'Neal, who faces no charges in the case, also said at one point after the shooting that someone who at least resembled former New Orleans Police Capt. William Ceravolo, a friend of the Smiths, was among the men trying to restrain the former Saints defensive captain.

But according to prosecutors and former Saints running back Pierre Thomas, who testified Wednesday, Ceravolo, after dining with the group, had left and was nowhere around when the gunfire erupted.

O'Neal said he was going off news accounts and photos of Ceravolo, apparently mistaking him for another man there.

Rodrigue pressed O'Neal, often in mocking tones, over his account of the volatile altercation and his purported attempt to get the license plate number and call 911.

O'Neal claimed he attempted to dial 911 after the shooting but never managed to make the call.

Following the crash, he said, two men immediately ran up on his side of Hayes' Hummer. He thought they came from the Chevy Impala at the front of the three-vehicle crash scene but said on the stand that he wasn't sure.

The Smith camp seemed "drunk or high on something" and got "more hostile and irate as time progressed," O'Neal testified.

"One of the gentlemen states, the gentleman says, 'I feel played, someone hit us. Someone hit us twice,' " he added. "He stated he wanted a physical altercation. He takes off his shirt and he starts to get really, really erratic. Him and the other guy who was with him. ... The whole while I'm trying to stop them, telling them to chill out."

O'Neal said he has training in martial arts and boxing but that he declined to employ those skills during the fracas.

Buras, the judge, at one point admonished O'Neal for frowning toward Racquel Smith's supporters on the prosecution side of the courtroom gallery.

O'Neal, often combative under questioning from Rodrigue, said he saw someone in the courtroom gallery "do this to me" and raised his middle finger to his forehead.

Later, two friends who were at the Half Moon Bar near the scene of the shooting offered testimony that seemingly bolstered some aspects of the state's case against Hayes while potentially hurting others.

Justin Ross said he and his friend, Abby Levray, heard Hayes' Hummer run into the back of Smith's Mercedes SUV and then walked over toward the collision site. Ross repeatedly said it did not appear to him that Smith posed any life-endangering threat after the crash, saying the most aggressive person was Hernandez.

Ross also said the only person he heard mention a gun was O'Neal, who said he had one as he was pleading with Hernandez to "back off."

But Ross also testified that he heard Hernandez shout, "I will kill you, f***ing n***er!" to both O'Neal and Hayes, which the defense seized on to illustrate that both Hayes and O'Neal had reason to feel threatened.

Asked Wednesday if he had said that, Hernandez denied it.

Ross said he recorded part of the altercation on cellphone video and then appeared in separate, widely circulated footage captured by someone else describing what he heard before the shooting.

Levray echoed some of Ross' testimony, though she said she never heard anyone mention a gun. She said that on first glance it appeared the people from Smith's SUV were the aggressors in the altercation she witnessed, mainly because Hernandez was beating his bare chest in what she described as a "strange" scene.

Prosecutors have disputed the notion that Hernandez could have made O'Neal or Hayes truly fear for their lives, given his smaller stature.

Additionally, under questioning by prosecutor Jason Napoli, Levray conceded her opinion on who were the aggressors would change if she had information about who had mentioned a gun or later fired one. Levray said she didn't see who fired at Smith and that she ducked for cover when she heard gunfire.

The testimony late Thursday turned to the police investigation, as a former Police Department ballistics expert, Meredith Acosta, testified that all nine of the spent shell casings found at the crime scene, as well as the bullets in Smith's corpse, came from the same weapon: the .45-caliber Ruger semi-automatic handgun that Hayes fired.

The gun, lead homicide detective Bruce Brueggeman later testified, wasn't registered to Hayes. It was purchased for him by O'Neal, he said.

Brueggeman testified into the night, first walking the jury through videos showing the two vehicles traveling down Magazine Street and onto Sophie Wright Place, though none of them showed the final crash or the mayhem that followed.

The veteran detective faced an animated cross-examination as Fuller took aim at a police investigation he claimed was tainted by Smith's celebrity and a rush to indict Hayes quickly for the killing.

Hayes' indictment came just 18 days after his arrest, and Brueggeman acknowledged that several witness interviews, as well as toxicology tests showing Smith's blood-alcohol level at nearly three times the legal driving limit, came after the April 28 indictment.

Brueggeman also said police recovered video showing Ceravolo at the Windsor Court Hotel downtown at the moment Smith was shot.

That seemed to contradict Fuller's allegation that the former NOPD captain showed up in time to tamper with the crime scene following his friend's killing.

Fuller barked that police took pains to protect Ceravolo, securing the video before looking for similar evidence to verify Hayes' self-defense claim.

Brueggeman demurred, saying, "We wanted to make sure Billy Ceravolo was playing by the rules and wasn't breaking the law."

The detective acknowledged that only Smith, Hernandez and another man in their party had to be restrained during the street altercation, and that Hayes did not.

"And you don't know if Mr. Hernandez told Mr. Hayes, 'I'm-a f***ing going to kill you, n-word?'" Fuller asked.

"Mr. Hernandez never told me that," the detective responded.

"I'm sure he didn't," Fuller replied.

The detective did say he "had information that a member of the Smith party, and it turned out to be Mr. Hernandez, was acting the fool."

Brueggeman said that officers smelled alcohol on Hayes' breath after the shooting but never tested him because they felt he was sober. Fuller has said his client wasn't drinking that night.

In rhetorical fashion, Fuller also asked Brueggeman whether getting out and charging the other party was the proper response to a vehicle collision.

"That would be the wrong thing to do. That's how we end up in a day like we (have) today," the detective responded. "We don't need any violence on the street. Especially in New Orleans. Anywhere in the South. People carry weapons."

WWL-TV's Danny Monteverde contributed to this report.

Notes from Brueggeman's late-night testimony, after print deadline

-- Under cross examination by Fuller, Brueggeman testified that Ross mentioned to other officers that he captured video of the entire argument that preceded Smith's shooting on his cellphone. But, after an officer on the scene sent that video of the pre-shooting argument to himself, it was lost, Brueggeman testified.

Ross, earlier in the day, offered similar testimony.

Brueggeman then acknowledged that such a video would likely be vital to any homicide investigation, since it could help explain what caused a killing to occur. Asked if he wished to have Ross' whole video, Brueggeman admitted that he would.

Nonetheless, while later being questioned by Rodrigue, Brueggeman said nothing he found during his investigation showed Smith ever grabbed a gun or said he was going to get one before he was killed.

-- While questioning Brueggeman, Fuller established that Ceravolo eventually did show up at the scene of Smith's killing. Brueggeman conceded that not all of Ceravolo's whereabouts that night on the scene were documented on video, and he told Fuller he wasn't sure whether Ceravolo went searching for the cell phone of Racquel Smith at any point.

Though Fuller moved on after that, those questions follow insinuations by the defense that Ceravolo might have tampered with evidence at the scene of the killing, to preserve Smith's public image. The state denies Ceravolo altered the scene or even had the opportunity to do so, but Fuller's questions to Brueggeman about the former NOPD captain apparently aimed to raise doubt in jurors' minds about that assertion.

-- Earlier, Brueggeman testified that when investigators searched Smith's car, the former Saint's gun had its safety on and was holstered in a hard, plastic case, wedged in between the driver's seat and the center console.

-- A note unrelated to Brueggeman's testimony: After Rodrigue mentioned O'Neal's comments about Fuller, Fuller got O'Neal to say it made sense for the witness to be angry with the attorney, given that Hayes has remained in jail for eight months since Smith's shooting.

This post has been updated since it was first published.