Homicide suspect Jessica Lee Callahan, of Hilliards, will testify about the March 20, 2023, shooting death of her boyfriend, Tyler Whitlatch, according to her attorney’s opening statement Monday, the first day of her trial.

State police charged Callahan, 20, with killing Whitlatch, 31, outside her home on Kohlmeyer Road in Venango Township.

After shooting Whitlatch, Callahan started driving him to Butler Memorial Hospital but stopped at the North Washington Rodeo grounds in Washington Township when his condition deteriorated.

A recording of a 23-minute call Callahan made to 911 from the rodeo grounds was played after assistant district attorney Mark Lope and defense attorney J.W. Hernandez-Cuebas made their opening statements to the jury.

Callahan is crying hysterically in the recording as she identifies herself and Whitlatch and tells a dispatcher what happened and the dispatcher instructs her about providing CPR to Whitlatch.

“I’m at the North Washington Rodeo. He came at me. He’s dead,” she tells the dispatcher in the recording.

The dispatcher tells her to take him out of the car, and she indicates that she does. The dispatcher then asks about the gun, and Callahan says it is at the house. The dispatcher then instructs her on administering CPR chest compressions and breathing.

A woman arrives at the scene and helps by performing chest compressions while Callahan was breathing into Whitlatch’s mouth, according to the recording.

Eventually, Callahan says he’s dead. The dispatcher asks her if she wants to try again. “No, I’m done,” Callahan responded.

After the dispatcher tells her to close the car doors and wait for police outside, she gives the phone to Mark Rumbaugh, who was driving by the rodeo and stopped to assist.

Rumbaugh tells the dispatcher the man lying on the ground isn’t breathing and his chest is not moving. He reports that Callahan doesn’t have any weapons and says she’s wearing a bra, no shoes, long pants and no shirt. Rumbaugh testified briefly after the recording was played.

A video recording of Callahan’s interview with Cpl. Max Deluca and Trooper Jennifer Cantella at the state police barracks in Butler was also played.

In the interview, Callahan said she knew Whitlatch all her life and that their families are friends. She said they started dating in November 2022, but their relationship started going badly and they had two arguments that became physical before March 20.

She said she, Whitlatch and several other people were at the home of one of her relatives the night before the incident and they used crack cocaine. She said she and Whitlatch left at 2 a.m. March 20 and went to her home but waited nearby in her car until her father left at 6:30 a.m. before going inside and going to sleep.

That afternoon, she said she and Whitlatch got into another argument in which he grabbed her by the throat and pushed her.

She said she went downstairs to the living room and sat down, but he grabbed her. She said she then grabbed a loaded semiautomatic shotgun that was kept behind the couch, told him to get away from her and went outside with the gun. She said she is a trap shooter.

While outside, she said she threatened to shoot Whitlatch if he came near her. He walked to the driveway and started throwing rocks at her, and she fired a warning shot before shooting him as he reached for a cinder block. She said she was on the patio when she fired.

Callahan said she checked on Whitlatch and saw a bleeding wound on his right shoulder, and he told her to take him to the hospital.

During the drive to the hospital, she said she told Whitlatch to keep pressure on the wound, but he said he wasn’t able to. She said he started fading in and out of consciousness before his head hit the dashboard.

She said she then pulled over and called 911. She told the dispatcher she thought Whitlatch was going to hit her with a cinder block before she shot him.

Callahan told Deluca she was “kind of” sorry she shot him and that he had previously threatened to kill her.

She then said Whitlatch didn’t reach for a cinder block. Instead he reached for a “funnel thing,” she said in the video recording.

During the interview, she drew sketches of the area outside of her home where the shooting took place. One was a draft and the second depicted her account of the incident.

After Callahan drew the second sketch, Deluca called troopers who were at her home to compare the details and drawings she provided to what was at the scene.

When the interview resumed, Deluca tells her that no spent shotgun shells were found on the patio and only one spent shell was recovered. One live shell also was recovered, he said.

Callahan then said she was “probably” in the yard when she fired and Whitlatch was near her mailbox along the side of the road when she shot him.

She told Deluca that Whitlatch was not running away from her when she fired. She said he was near the mailbox because she told him to get a ride.

Callahan said she was in the yard when she fired a warning shot as he walked down the road. Whitlatch laughed at her after she fired the warning shot, but then started walking back toward her when she fired a second time, she said, and she fired toward a bush that Whitlatch was in line with.

She drew a third sketch of the scene during the interview. All three sketches were displayed for the jury.

The trial resumes Tuesday.