TAVARES — Devante “Jimmy” Carthers was “snapping” at Andrew Williams from the back seat of a car on May 28, 2018, when Williams turned around from the front passenger seat and started blasting away with a 9 mm handgun, a witness in the first-degree murder trial testified Tuesday.

Macheryl Williams, who is not related to Andrew, testified she was under the impression the two men were friends, and was not worried about them arguing with each other.

She told Eustis police at the time she could not hear everything that was being said, just that Carthers was “snapping.”

“I’m tired of this. I’m going to snap,” she quoted Carthers in the arrest affidavit.

But what was behind the fatal shooting?

No doubt, the 12-member jury panel picked Monday will not have every question answered by the end of the week. That’s because not all investigative tidbits will be allowed to be shown to jurors, by court ruling.

The state’s theory is that Carthers, who is also known as Jimmy Sceal, was a witness to a fatal shooting earlier, with Andrew claiming self-defense.

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It had been a normal day. Macheryl said she was on the way to work as an Uber driver when Williams, 24, asked if she could take him to Leesburg to pick up his car, which Carthers had borrowed. Williams then insisted on riding with her while driving Uber passengers.

“Jimmy called to pick him up, and that changed everything,” she testified.

She said they had just passed Winn Dixie on County Road 44 when Williams turned around to face 25-year-old Carthers. She said she thought he was going to say something to Carthers. Instead, the “pitch black” interior of the car, as she described it, exploded with the sound of gunfire, blazing muzzle flashes and ejected shell casings ricocheting inside the automobile.

She would later tell police she figured he may have shot Carthers seven times.

“Why would you do it?” she asked. “Why did you kill this man?”

Williams told her he was in fear for his life because Carthers was “snapping,” according to the arrest affidavit.

“If you tell on me, I’m going to kill you right now, because I’m not going to jail,” he told her.

She said she swore she would not tell anyone.

When they reached Jenny Lane, a dirt road off CR 44, he ordered her to stop, and dragged the body out of the back seat, dumping it on the ground near the road.

A passerby saw the man’s body lying face down in the road at 1:30 a.m., and thought it was a drunken person who had passed out. He soon realized that he had made a grisly discovery. Police found footprints, tire tracks and a freshly smoked cigarette near the body.

Williams testified that Andrew had her drive to a friend’s house.

Jonathan Torres testified that he was asleep when Andrew woke him up and asked for cleaning materials to clean up the car, “because his girlfriend had thrown up in the car.”

“I gave him some napkins and some water,” he said.

Williams also asked him to charge his phone for him.

Macheryl said he was using bleach wipes to try and clean up the blood in the back seat.

“That’s not going to do it,” she told him.

Macheryl said they kept driving around until they stopped at a convenience store. He went inside, and she saw her chance to drive away.

She drove to her mother’s house, hid the car as best she could, in case Andrew showed up, and called police.

It didn’t take long to find the evidence they were looking for. Two bullet holes pierced a rear passenger door from the inside out, and among the items on the front floorboard was a box of 9 mm ammo. Spent rounds were found beneath a covering of the spare tire in the cargo area, and in back seats.

Assistant State Attorney Nick Camuccio had a Eustis crime scene investigator open piles of sealed evidence bags in court, and explain what he was looking at, a set of tires removed from the car, as well as photos of the 2014 Ford Escape. One of those pieces of evidence was a shotgun lying in the cargo area. Carthers did not try to use it, if he even knew it was there.

Nor did Carthers use a .380-caliber semi-automatic handgun that was found in his pocket.

Eleven hours later, Andrew was shot in the leg by a passerby near a friend’s house.

Carthers had a violent past. As a teenager in 2010, he was convicted of shooting into an occupied vehicle and possession of a firearm by a delinquent. He was convicted of strong-arm robbery in 2014 and was arrested again in 2017 for allegedly shooting into a car, but that charge was eventually dropped.

Andrew was convicted of obstruction and tampering with a witness in 2016.

Defense attorney Vivionne Barker told Senior Judge Larry Semento on Tuesday that she expected to present her case Wednesday.