Cesar Rodriguez said he just wanted to talk to Eric Garcia Mulero as he approached Garcia Mulero’s parked car.

“The car door opened and shots were fired,” Rodriguez testified Tuesday during the second day of Garcia Mulero’s trial.

Rodriguez was shot five times, according to the emergency room doctor who treated him. He was left paralyzed from the waist down, she said.

He testified he remembers coughing up blood, then begging to be driven to the hospital because he might be dead if he waited for an ambulance.

“All I remember was, I told the doctor to tell my family I love them if I die,” Rodriguez testified Tuesday in Northampton County.

Garcia Mulero, 28, of Bethlehem, is charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault and related charges for the May 5, 2019, shooting. Rodriguez, of New York, survived the shooting but will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, he said.

The shooting was outside the home of Garcia Mulero’s ex-girlfriend, the mother of his child. She lives in the 800 block of Argus Court in Bethlehem.

Police said the shooting happened during a custody exchange. Garcia Mulero told police he hadn’t seen his child in two weeks and wanted to visit. He made the claim during a police interrogation captured on video and shown to jurors Tuesday in Northampton County Court. Garcia Mulero doesn’t speak English, so his comments were translated by a Bethlehem police officer on the interrogation video.

Rodriguez testified Garcia Mulero made threats at some point prior to the shooting.

“The defendant had made a lot of comments that he was going to kill my son that he was going to put a gun in my son’s mouth and he was going to kill him,” Rodriguez testified.

Garcia Mulero acknowledged shooting Rodriguez with a bb gun about two weeks prior to the May 5 shooting but said he did it in self-defense.

Rodriguez testified that he approached Garcia Mulero on the day of the shooting in order to clear the air about the threats.

Garcia Mulero claimed in a written confession that Rodriguez started hitting him and forced him to shoot in self-defense.

“He opened the (car) door and he started hitting me. I took out the gun. I shot him. I shot him,” Garcia Mulero said in the written translation as read by the Bethlehem police officer. Garcia Mulero claimed to have fired a warning shot.

“He kept hitting me so I kept shooting him,” Garcia Mulero claimed, adding he kept shooting Rodriguez until he fell.

Rodriguez testified the shooting was unprovoked. There was no evidence of injuries to Garcia Mulero, police said.

Pennsylvania State police ballistics expert Jesse Oleksza testified one round was fired into Rodriguez’s back from a foot to a foot and a half away. All the shots were fired from a distance of no more than four feet, Oleksza said.

St. Luke’s Hospital trauma surgeon Christine Lynn Ramirez said one bullet went through Rodriguez’s lung, through his stomach and lodged in his spine. That bullet left him paralyzed. Another bullet went through his cheek through the roof of his mouth, she said. Surgeons had to repair Rodriguez’s mouth and his internal organs. All five bullets remain in his body, Ramirez said. She said Rodriguez was in the hospital for a month.

Rodriguez testified Tuesday from a wheelchair.

Garcia Mulero wore a pair of headphones and had testimony translated into Spanish by an interpreter during the trial.

Bethlehem police Investigator Blake Kuntz tried to calm Garcia Mulero during the interrogation. He thanked him for speaking with police and said he should have a clear conscience because he cooperated.

“It’s OK,” Kuntz said.

Then Garcia Mulero made his only statement in English for the entire video:

“It’s OK? Life in prison is OK?” he asked.

The trial will continue Wednesday.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. If there’s anything about this story that needs attention, please email him. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.