Lincoln man's murder case begins with dramatic video of his father dying (2024)

The video caught on a front door camera started out slowly and quietly with Mark Kruger walking into view from the driveway, holding his hand up to his bare chest.

He sat down on the front porch as a woman, on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, came into view.

"Tell them to hurry," Mark Kruger told her, repeatedly. "Tell them to f-ing hurry. I'm losing it."

The dramatic video prompted tears and hugs in the courtroom, as Mark Kruger said he was getting light-headed before slowly leaning to prop himself up with his arm.

"Hurry up, please. I'm losing conscious(ness)," he said, falling back slowly on his back on the concrete porch.

Chaos followed, as family swarmed in to try to save him and pleaded for him to breathe. Among them, Joseph Kruger, the man now on trial for killing him.

The video of Mark Kruger's final moments captured Joseph Kruger quickly giving himself up when the first Lincoln police officer arrived on the scene at 6217 Baldwin Ave., across the street from Lincoln Northeast High School,soon after and asked who did it.

"I did," Joseph Kruger said.

In opening statements, Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Eric Miller called what happened May 7, 2023, first-degree murder.

He said it started with a family celebration-of-life party for an uncle diagnosed with cancer. When Joseph Kruger showed up around 7 p.m., he was served a plate of food as people ate around a picnic table in the back.

Miller said what started with the kids bickering led to an argument betweenJoseph Kruger and his sister, then their father, too.

"At some point Mark throws a punch. He's the one that initiates the physical confrontation between himself and Joseph Kruger. From there, it's on," the prosecutor said.

Miller said the fight was broken up, but started up again in the driveway area. At some point, he said, Joseph Kruger had his father up against a chain-link fence and said: "I'm going to kill you."

He was pulled off. Everyone thought it was over, he said.

That's when, Miller said, Joseph Kruger walked across the driveway to the picnic table, grabbed a steak knife and walked toward Mark Kruger and stabbed him "right dead center in the chest."

"He thought about it, he said it and he went over and he did it," he said.

Deputy Lancaster County Public Defender Shawn Elliott took issue with Miller's description of events.

"Well, it's not as simple as all that," he told the jury in his opening statement.

Elliott said Miller had failed to say what the other witnesses told police, including the woman on the phone who called 911, and that key witnesses had failed to tell police that they had heard Joseph Kruger threaten to kill his father in their statements right after it happened.

"You're going to hear people say one thing and then you're going to hearpeople say the exact opposite essentially," he said. "But you have to listen to all the evidence."

Elliott said when the jury does he thinks they will conclude that Mark Kruger had repeatedly struck Joseph Kruger and wouldn't back down. He was told to stay back, but he wouldn't.

He said Mark Kruger continued to advance on Joseph Kruger to the point where Joseph Kruger had to defend himself, which is why he picked up the knife.

"It was Mark that advanced on Joseph," the defense attorney said.

Elliott said while the state painted Joseph Kruger as "mad as hell" and wanting to kill his father, it didn't add up with the evidence. Joseph Kruger stayed and tried to do CPR, then told the first officer on scene that he had caused the injury.

While he was being handcuffed, he asked the officer to help his father, he said.

"Does that sound like the actions of someone who was trying to kill his father that day?" Elliott said.

Trial is expected to last all week.