An Aurora police officer appeared to openly struggle at times with testifying against a fellow officer as a witness for prosecutors in this week’s trial over Elijah McClain’s 2019 death.

Officer Alicia Ward’s testimony Friday in the trial of Officer Nathan Woodyard marked the second time she took the stand for the prosecution of McClain’s death. Prosecutors previously called her in the trial of Aurora officers Randy Roedema and Jason Rosenblatt.

Woodyard faces charges of reckless manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Woodyard was the first of three officers who approached McClain after a teenage 911 caller said McClain, who was wearing a face mask and listening to music, seemed “sketchy” and was waving his arms as he walked home from a convenience store on the night of Aug. 24, 2019.

After a struggle, Woodyard put McClain in a neck hold that can induce brief unconsciousness by restricting blood flow to a person’s brain.

After Ward responded to the scene of the police’s struggle with McClain, she helped restrain McClain on the ground by putting her hand on the back of his head. But she testified she didn’t put weight on him. Because of Ward’s position close to him, Senior Assistant Attorney General Jason Slothouber questioned her Friday about whether McClain was properly put in a “recovery” position on his side to ensure he could breathe while restrained.

“I would say typical recovery position would be the one shoulder up, and I think probably I would say if a shoulder is over, that’s not the typical recovery position. So I’m not sure why I’m being hesitant. I’m just trying to not describe anything incorrectly,” she said.

Slothouber jumped on her hesitancy to explicitly say McClain had fallen onto his stomach by that moment, a position that made it difficult for him to breathe properly, which he said was inconsistent with Ward’s more definitive testimony in Roedema and Rosenblatt’s trial.

“Is your hesitation related to your relationship with the defendant?”

“No,” Ward replied.

“It’s having no effect on you that you work with them?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s having no effect on me, but (not) related to that answer,” Ward said.

Woodyard’s defense attorneys argue he had stepped away from the immediate vicinity of the struggle for much of the encounter after he applied the carotid hold, and thus he was not involved in the decisions made during that time.

On cross-examination of Ward, Woodyard’s defense attorney Megan Downing emphasized that as the struggle stretched on, Roedema and a sergeant took charge of giving directions on how to continue restraining McClain and telling him to stop moving.

“Never an instruction, a directive or a suggestion from Officer Woodyard, is that right?”

“Not that I recall,” Ward said.

The jury also heard Friday from an officer who provides carotid hold training to other Aurora officers, another officer who responded to the scene and two employees at the time of the ambulance company that contracts with Aurora Fire Rescue and provided the ketamine, Falck Rocky Mountain.

McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist, was often cold and wore a runner’s mask and jacket that night to keep warm, prosecutors have said.

Prosecutors said Woodyard put his hands on McClain less than 10 seconds after getting out of his patrol car, without introducing himself or explaining why he wanted to talk to McClain. McClain, seemingly caught off guard, tried to keep walking.

Woodyard told him he had the right to stop McClain because he was “being suspicious.”

Officer Randy Roedema said several times during the struggle he saw McClain try to grab former officer Jason Rosenblatt’s gun. Prosecutors have refuted those claims.

Paramedics later injected McClain with a 500-milligram dose of ketamine, a sedative. He stopped breathing and went into cardiac arrest shortly after. A doctor pronounced him brain dead three days later.

Prosecutors accuse Woodyard of breaking from his training by not taking measures required after the use of a carotid hold, such as checking McClain’s vital signs and making sure he was in a good position to breathe.

Woodyard’s defense attorneys argue he had to react quickly during the encounter and did not have the luxury of hindsight in understanding what happened to McClain’s health over the course of the struggle with officers.

As in the cases of two other officers who already faced trial, Woodyard’s defense attorneys seek to lay blame instead on Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics who are scheduled for trial next month, because of the decision to inject McClain with the sedative ketamine after the 18-minute struggle with police. Paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec are scheduled to be prosecuted in the final trial in connection with McClain’s death next month.

A jury convicted Roedema on Oct. 12 of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault, the least serious charges he faced, but acquitted Rosenblatt on all counts.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.