The teenager who claims to be a key witness to the off-duty police shooting of a 14-year-old in Southeast Washington told authorities that he possessed the .45 handgun for only one day before detectives found the weapon in his bedroom closet, according to court testimony Thursday.

The gun was being tested by D.C. ballistics experts to determine whether it was the one used in a gun battle involving DeOnte Rawlings and two off-duty D.C. police officers who were looking for a minibike stolen from one of the cops’ garages.

The .45 had been missing since the Sept. 17 shooting, and Rawlings’ family says that he was not carrying a weapon the night he was shot.

Clifton Coleman, the 19-year-old friend of Rawlings’, was in the D.C. Superior Courtroom answering charges of his own Thursday. Coleman was accused of assault with a deadly weapon after he allegedly shot his 15-year-old girlfriend in the face in a Condon Terrace apartment located just yards from where Rawlings was killed.

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In the D.C. Superior Court courtroom, Coleman kept his head bowed as prosecutors played the 911 tape in which Coleman is heard yelling at the dispatchers to come to the apartment to help his girlfriend.

D.C. police Detective Keith Batton told the court that Coleman told him that the gun had been in the apartment for a day and that it did not belong to him. Batton said that the girlfriend, who will likely survive, and Coleman were playing around when the gun went off.

Coleman has told police in a videotaped statement that he saw Rawlings fire two rounds from the .45 at police, sources close to the investigation have told The Examiner. The statement to police contradicts what Coleman has told the Rawlings family attorney, Gregory Lattimer, who said that last week Coleman claimed he and an unarmed Rawlings were running from police when the teen was shot.

bmyers@dexaminer.com

smccabe@dcexaminer.com