"Yeah, it's messed up," said Colbert, slumped in a chair in a tiny interview room at the Calumet Area police headquarters. "Nobody wants to live their life like that."
The hourlong interview was played for a Cook County jury Tuesday as Colbert's trial got under way in the murder of Derrion Albert, 16. Colbert, now 20, is the last of five defendants charged in the September 2009 melee among students from the Altgeld Gardens public housing complex and rivals from "The Ville" neighborhood.
The death sparked a national debate on youth violence after an amateur video of the brawl went viral on the Internet.
Colbert, at the time a Fenger senior with no criminal history, was among a group of teens seen on the video beating, kicking and stomping Albert during the fight. He was arrested more than four months later after witnesses identified him as one of the attackers.
During the police interrogation, Colbert admitted kicking Albert at least once in the head and stomping on his body. Asked why he attacked Albert when he was defenseless, Colbert said, "I guess in the heat of the moment, tired of everything that was going on."
In his opening statement Tuesday to jurors, Colbert's attorney, Michael Clancy, painted Albert as an aggressor, saying he went to the scene "for one reason: to terrorize kids from the Garden." But prosecutors said there was no legal justification for Colbert's actions.
Three others — including two charged as adults and one juvenile — were convicted of murder by a jury, while the fourth defendant pleaded guilty to murder.
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