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Witness testifies to hearing scream the morning woman was killed in Gurnee

A woman testified Wednesday she "heard this awful scream" after arriving at her Gurnee house after work about 4 a.m. Sept. 27, 2015, the night a neighbor was killed.

"I didn't know what it was," she told the Lake County courtroom. The noise came from the direction of Beata Brocksom's house and was followed by someone saying "help me" three or four times before everything went silent, she said.

"It was scary," she added.

When a light switched on at Brocksom's house, she texted and called Beata Brocksom to see if she heard the same noise. There was no answer.

"I was ... I was just, like, nervous," the neighbor testified. Officials requested her name not be used in media reports.

After waking up her husband to tell him about the noise, she went to sleep, only to wake up several hours later when a police officer asked her to evacuate her house, the woman testified.

After learning Brocksom was dead, the woman told police about the noise, and filled out a police report.

David Brocksom, 46, of Kenosha, Wisconsin, faces seven felony counts of first-degree murder in the death of his 48-year-old ex-wife. He also faces three felony counts of home invasion and one count of robbery.

The trial began with jury selection Monday and Tuesday morning, and the first witnesses took the stand Wednesday.

David Brocksom remains held in Lake County jail on $3 million bail.

Authorities say he was with his two children in the Wisconsin Dells when his daughter told him her mother, Beata, had assaulted her. David Brocksom became irate, left the children in Wisconsin in the middle of the night and drove to Beata Brocksom's house on the 3700 block of Pacific Avenue.

After he arrived about 4 a.m., the couple got into an argument that escalated to a fistfight, authorities said. David Brocksom told police he was struck in the face with an object that knocked him over. When he snapped out of it, he was on his back and Beata was standing over him with a gun, he told police.

The two struggled and two shots were fired, authorities said. The first bullet hit a mattress, but the second struck Beata Brocksom in the neck, lodging in her spine, authorities said.

She left through a window into the backyard, before dying near some bushes, authorities said.

David Brocksom left and went to his parent's house in Kenosha, and grabbed his ex-wife's two cellphones before leaving, authorities said. He called a friend to pick up his children from the Wisconsin Dells, and later turned himself in to police, authorities said.

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