George Huguely breaks down crying while watching police tape during murder trial

By: Crimesider Staff
Topics: Daily Blotter

George Huguely and Yeardley Love

(Credit: AP/Dialy Progress via Charlottesville Police Department)

(CBS/AP) CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - Former University of Virginia lacrosse player George Huguely V was doubled over in court Friday, hands over his face and crying as he watched a videotape of himself being grilled by police and being told his ex-girlfriend Yeardley Love was dead.

Jurors in Huguely's first-degree murder trial viewed a police interrogation video that was recorded hours after Love's body was found in her apartment in May 2010. She was discovered by her roommate, bloodied and beaten.

Pictures: Yeardley Love Murdered; George Huguely Charged

ABC news reports the video was also positioned so that the jury could watch, but the press and the public in the courtroom could not see it.

"I have to tell you something," Det. Lisa Reeves tells Huguely after he had answered questions about the night's events. "She's dead. You killed her."

"She's dead? How is she dead?" Huguely asked repeatedly. "Please, please tell me she is not dead."

"George, I wish I could, but I can't do that. She's 22-years-old and the life's gone out of her," Reeves said.

A panic-stricken Huguely then screams, cries, and repeats over and over that he doesn't believe Love is dead, that he wants to see her and that he didn't murder her.

Huguely was leaning over his knees with his head in his hands crying in the courtroom as he watched. Loud sobs could be heard coming from Love's family, who could not see the video but could hear the audio.

Huguely told police he had gone to talk to Love about their on-again-off again relationship and the encounter turned physical. He insisted he did not inflict the lethal injuries.

Before finding out Love was dead, Huguely told police in his video-taped statement that when he went to see his former girlfriend the night of her death he told her to "chill out" and "shook her a little."

"We were just going to talk," Huguely told the officer in the video.

Huguely, 24, is charged with first degree murder as well as five other charges in the death of Love.

Complete coverage of Yeardley Love on Crimesider