A reluctant witness testified Tuesday she had no memory of seeing Keith Daniel shot outside her then-Gary apartment near 6th Avenue and Maryland Street.

Joseph T. Durden, 36, of Indianapolis is on trial this week for his July 19, 2020 murder.

The woman — who the Post-Tribune is not naming — repeatedly told Deputy Prosecutor Michelle Jackiewicz that she didn’t remember seeing Daniel, or later talking to the police.

“I blocked it all out,” she said at one point.

Jackiewicz disputed her account, calling her a “hostile” witness.

Defense lawyer John Cantrell argued to Judge Salvador Vasquez to take the woman at her word.

Vasquez sent the jury out for a lengthy break and ultimately allowed Jackiewicz to continue to question the woman, then playing snippets of her police interview from 2020 for the jury to contradict what she said.

“He’s alive,” she told Detective Kris Adams on the tape. “He’s just trying to get up.”

The woman was arrested over the weekend — in a rare step — to compel her to show up for the trial. She appeared on the stand handcuffed in a green jail jumpsuit and was visibly frustrated with Jackiewizcz at times, who put headphones on her at various points to listen to her police interview.

“I’ve been treated like a dog,” the woman said at one point.

Gary police Lt. Thomas Pawlak testified the woman was among witnesses “very cooperative” at the scene. Daniel, 29, of Gary, was taken to the hospital where he was later pronounced dead.

Police were called at 9 p.m. in July 2020 to the 1800 block of Connecticut Street, where they found a 2001 Oldsmobile Alero riddled with bullet holes, according to court records. The car was traced to Durden.

A shell casing found there matched the ones extracted from Daniel, documents show.

Cantrell, with co-counsel Nick Barnes, said during opening arguments there were holes in the case. The prosecution’s case, Cantrell said, boils down to two people were in a vehicle and one of them died, so the other person committed the murder.

The prosecution can’t prove that Durden and Daniel were in the car together because there’s “no time stamp on DNA.”

Cantrell said what prosecutors didn’t state in opening statements was that a third piece of DNA was found at the scene of an unidentified person, and he raised questions about who that person could be.

mcolias @post-trib.com