On the evening of Aug. 5, 2023, Kyle Stacy and his girlfriend, Olivia, were walking their dog on the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail in Bel Air when he heard a tree branch snap.

“I saw a man in the woods — just out there,” Stacy testified on Wednesday in Harford County Circuit Court. “I think he felt like he got caught, so to speak.”

The man was holding a walking stick, he said, and wearing sunglasses and a gray sweatshirt with the hood up.

Stacy said he felt “pretty nervous and uncomfortable” and believed the man was “acting sneaky.”

Thirty seconds to one minute later, Stacy said, he and his girlfriend walked past a woman he would soon learn was Rachel Morin. She was wearing a pair of Apple AirPods and doing something with her Apple Watch. And she was alone.

When Stacy went to work that following Monday, he learned from a coworker that Morin had been killed.

“When I pulled up the news article and saw Rachel’s picture,” he said, “my heart sank immediately.”

He immediately picked up the phone and called the Harford County Sheriff’s Office.

Law enforcement alleges that an approximately 10-month investigation led detectives to Victor Martinez-Hernandez, and Tulsa Police arrested him last summer at a sport bar. He’s now standing trial on charges of first- and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree rape, third-degree sex offense and kidnapping.

The jury heard testimony from five witnesses who helped fill in what happened in Morin’s final moments.

Circuit Judge Yolanda L. Curtin is presiding over the trial, which will continue on Thursday.

Martinez-Hernandez, 24, is being held in the Harford County Detention Center without bail. Prosecutors are seeking life in prison without the possibility of parole.

His attorneys, Assistant Public Defenders Marcus Jenkins, Sawyer Hicks and Tara LeCompte, argue that there are unanswered questions and gaps in the case.

Harford County Sheriff’s Lt. Brandon Underhill testified that he responded on Aug. 14, 2023, to investigate a cellphone that was continuously pinging in an area off the trail where a searcher had found Morin’s body: a drainage tunnel that runs under Maryland Route 24.

That’s when Underhill said he noticed a garden shovel.

“It looked relatively unused. There was still a lot of color to it,” he testified. “It was sitting on top of the ground.”

Investigators later showed the shovel to Stacy, who identified it as the object the man in the woods was using as a walking stick.

Law enforcement obtained surveillance video that captured Morin leaving a Wawa store at 6:29 p.m. and Target at 6:42 p.m. on the night she was killed. Meanwhile, security footage from Independent Brewing Co. showed her vehicle at 6:50 p.m. pulling into the Williams Street parking lot of the trail.

The sheriff’s office received at least 1,000 tips, said Detective Phil Golden, the lead investigator in the case.

Golden testified that the agency sent swabs taken from Morin’s body to the Maryland State Police, which was able to develop a DNA profile.

For months, though, leads did not pan out.

Digital forensic examiner Megan Waltimyer testified that she took the logic board out of an iPhone XR that belonged to Morin and rebuilt the device.

The phone was paired with her Apple Watch and contained health data, Waltimyer said.

But after 7:10 p.m., there were no more measurements.

The last text message Morin received was at 7:39 p.m. from her oldest daughter: Faye McMahon, Waltimyer said.

It was never read.