A Portsmouth jury on Wednesday acquitted a man who was charged with shooting a police officer last spring.

After nearly five hours of deliberation, the jury found Rakeem Christian not guilty of attempted aggravated murder of a law enforcement officer, malicious shooting, use of a firearm in commission of a felony and shooting during the commission of a felony.

The five-day trial centered on why Christian fired through his door on the night of March 10 and whether he knew his target was a police officer.

The officer who was shot, Ra’Shaad Banks, testified on the first day of the trial. He said he went to Christian’s townhome at the Henley Homes neighborhood with another officer after Chesapeake’s 911 center received a call about a domestic dispute, and officers believed there could be someone held in the home against their will.

Banks knocked on Christian’s door four times, then stepped asideto await a reply, according to body camera footage presented in court.

As Christian opens it, the footage shows him immediately fire his gun at Banks, who attempts to dodge the shot and runs away.

“He looked right in my eyes,” before firing the shot, Banks said in his testimony. The prosecution argued that Christian must have known Banks was a police officer.

“You cannot open your door and shoot,” said deputy commonwealth’s attorney Haille Hogeldt. “It could’ve been a kid, a door dasher at the wrong address, or a neighbor with mistaken mail. Could’ve been a police officer doing his job, and that’s what it was.”

Christian testified for nearly five hours on Tuesday, and said said he was scared for his life and the life of his 3-year-old daughter and her mother, Sha’naya Whiche.

Banks knock on the door came minutes after Christian received a phone call from Whiche’s boyfriend, Tae Blakeney.

Christian said Blakeney accused him of having an affair with Whiche and said he was coming over to kill him.

Police later found that the original Chesapeake 911 call was placed by Blakeney, who told dispatchers that his girlfriend – Whiche, the mother of Christian’s toddler – was being held against her will.

Whiche testified in the trial that she was not in danger that night – that her boyfriend thought she was having an affair with Christian and he made the 911 call out of anger and jealousy.

It was fear, Christian testified, that drove him to respond to the knock on his door by firing his gun.

Why didn’t Christian check his door’s peep hole, the footage from his Ring camera, or pull aside the blinds covering the window facing his front door, the prosecution asked during cross examination.

Even a juror wondered, in a note sent to Judge Spry after the trial’s fourth day, why the defendant chose to act “seemingly without use of common sense,” the note said.

Christian said his door’s peep hole didn’t allow him to see anything outside, especially at nighttime with his front porch light broken. He feared, if he looked out the window, that Blakeney might shoot him through it.

Within seconds, Christian said, he opened the door, saw a shadow move, and shot at it.

Then he called 911, he said.

Christian said he lied to the dispatcher at first, telling him that men in “a random vehicle” were shooting at his home. He didn’t tell the dispatcher someone had been shot, nor did he give them his exact address, according to a recording of the call played in the courtroom.

A voice can be heard in the background of the recording, telling the dispatcher that an officer had been shot outside a door. This, Christian said, was his first clue that the shadow he’d shot was a law enforcement officer.

That’s when, Christian said, he pulled up the footage of his Ring camera on his phone for the first time that night and saw Banks.

“I’m losing my mind now, sir,” said Christian to the dispatcher in a recording of the phone call. He says he then went to give his 3-year-old daughter a kiss before he stepped outside his door, to face responding Portsmouth police officers with his hands raised above his head.

Body camera footage of Christian’s arrest that night, presented by his defense attorney Andrew Sacks, shows Christian deeply concerned for his toddler and her mother.

“I failed my daughter,” Christian said, over and over again. “The only person I live for, I failed her.”

In another video recording of Christian in custody in the back of a police car, presented by the defense, he says, “if I harmed a public service officer, who am I? I am nobody.”

An officer responds, “everybody gets their day in court.”

Sacks said he was immediately extremely relieved and very grateful for the verdict.

“We are very appreciative that the jury saw the case the same way we did,” Sacks said. “He has always insisted that he was innocent of these charges, and that he was just trying to protect himself and his family.”