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At one point Liu answered a knock at her door, retrieved her cellphone and handed it to the man standing in her door frame, Meng said.

They were talking in English and he was pressing buttons on her phone, Meng said. All of a sudden the man tried to force his way inside, he said.

“Qian Liu was trying hard to push the door not to let him in,” Meng testified through a translator. “Eventually she could not prevent him from entering.”

The man came inside and closed the door behind him, with Liu pushing his chest the whole time, Meng said.

“She said ’no’ in Chinese,” he said. “Maybe she felt that he could not understand. Then she said ’no’ (in English).”

During the struggle Liu was pushed down off camera, though Meng could see one of her feet lift up and she was still saying “no” in Mandarin, he said.

“Next I heard two muffled bangs and from then I heard no more sound from Qian Liu,” Meng said. “After silence for a while I heard the man breathing heavily.”

The man locked the door to Liu’s apartment and turned off the lights, then again walked out of view in the direction of where Liu fell, Meng said. He could also hear sounds like furniture being moved around and like the jingling of keys.

Then the man appeared again in front of the webcam, Meng said.

“He was already naked,” he said. “He bent forward to shut the computer. This is what I saw.”

Dickson, during a 3 1/2-hour police interview, emphatically denied killing her.

Det.-Sgt. Frank Skubic testified Thursday that Dickson was arrested the next day, after results from DNA tests gave Skubic “reasonable grounds” to believe Dickson was responsible for Liu’s death.