GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan police officer who killed a man with a shot to the back of the head testified in his own defense Friday, telling jurors at his second-degree murder trial what he was thinking and feeling as video of the violent confrontation was played in court.

Christopher Schurr said it’s “important to get my side of the story out” after settling into the witness box.

There’s no dispute about how Patrick Lyoya, a 26-year-old Congolese immigrant, was killed in Grand Rapids in 2022. Jurors must decide whether Schurr, who was working alone, could have reasonably feared that he could suffer great bodily harm or be killed after Lyoya got control of his Taser.

Lyoya, a Black man, failed to produce a driver’s license after Schurr pulled him over for driving a car with a mismatched license plate. Then he ran, and the Grand Rapids officer chased and tackled him. As they physically struggled to exhaustion for more than two minutes that rainy spring morning, Schurr was heard desperately asking for officers to rush to the scene.

“My intent at that point is that I’m really struggling right now,” he told the jury after sighing and rubbing his face as the recording was played again.

Video shows the confrontation finally ended when Lyoya was shot in the back of the head while facedown on the ground. Schurr, his knee on the man’s back, fired after repeatedly demanding that Lyoya stop resisting and give up the Taser, which the officer had lost control of in the fight.

Outside the courthouse Friday, a crowd waved “thin blue line” flags in support of Schurr while standing along a busy downtown street.

The trial in Grand Rapids has mostly been a battle of experts.

Use-of-force experts testifying for the prosecutor said deadly force was not necessary to end the conflict. But several senior Grand Rapids officers, summoned by defense lawyers, said Schurr was at great risk when Lyoya got ahold of the Taser, a weapon that fires electrically charged probes to temporarily subdue an aggressor.

Schurr, 34, was fired by city officials at the recommendation of police Chief Eric Winstrom after he was charged in 2022. At the time, Winstrom said his recommendation was based on video of the encounter, the prosecutor’s review of a state police investigation and Schurr’s interview with internal investigators.