Crash details too graphic?

As a Philadelphia police officer showed a judge photographs of the taxi cab that plowed into a young mother and son last year, killing the boy, he spoke yesterday of the flesh, blood and skin recovered from the cab's shattered windshield.

Officer Charles Phillips' testimony during the opening day of Yellow Cab driver Yves Aristilde's nonjury trial proved to be too much detail for Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner.

"I think we are going way beyond what is necessary . . . From an evidence point of view, I don't know why we have to put everyone in the courtroom through this," Lerner told the prosecutor before ordering a short break.

Aristilde, 63, of Duncannon Avenue near 4th Street in Logan, is on trial on charges of vehicular homicide, leaving the scene of an accident involving death or serious bodily injury and related offenses.

Assistant District Attorney Jude Conroy said in his opening remarks that Dana Reynolds, then 23, and her son, Terrell Elliott, 5, were hit at 1:48 a.m. Aug. 24, 2008, when Aristilde sped through a red light on Windrim Avenue near Lindley, in Logan.

Terrell hit the windshield, rolled over the hood and traveled 61 feet from the point of impact, and his mother was found 36 feet away, Phillips testified.

Aristilde, who has pleaded not guilty and is free on bail, kept going but abandoned his badly damaged cab eight blocks away. He turned himself in to police the next day.

"Out of nowhere, at a high rate of speed . . . the defendant went through a steady red light and struck Ms. Reynolds, who was holding her 5-year-old son in her hands," Conroy said during an interview. Terrell died of massive internal injuries. His mother is recovering. She was supported in court by family and friends, Conroy said.

"It was a tragic, an unfortunate accident," defense attorney Clayton Hall said. "There is also a question of who had the traffic light."

Aristilde was expected to testify when the trial resumes this morning.