Witness after witness on Tuesday and early Wednesday testified that it was a dark-colored vehicle, possibly a maroon SUV or Suburban, that hit a white SUV before it flipped over, killing two people.

An Estero teen was driving just such a maroon Chevrolet Suburban that night in 2004 in Bonita Springs, when investigators say a gang fight outside of a movie theater sparked a car chase. That teen, Benito Garcia Gonzalez Jr., 18, who then lived at 3170 Seasons Way, is on trial — charged with two counts of vehicular homicide and one count of leaving the scene of an accident involving death — in connection with the Feb. 20 crash on U.S. 41.

But the color of the car accused of ramming that white Ford Explorer from behind changed Wednesday.

Now, it is blue.

During cross-examination Wednesday, Gonzalez’s defense attorney, Lee Hollander, asked Samuel Mendoza Tafoya, 23, of Fort Myers, if he ever gave a statement to investigators revealing the color of the vehicle that hit the white Ford Explorer he said he was driving before it crashed.

“Does that refresh your recollection?” Hollander asked after showing Tafoya one of his statements. “Again I ask you, what color was the vehicle you said hit you?”

“Because at that time it was dark color, it looked like blue,” Tafoya testified through a Spanish interpreter. “First, it hit us on the back.”

Tafoya was sentenced in March to two years of community control, followed by three years probation, after pleading no contest to one count of leaving the scene of an accident involving death. As part of his plea agreement, he was required to testify truthfully against Gonzalez.

Tafoya’s friends — Jose Carmen Alcozar Mendoza, 17, and Sergio Vargas Rocha, 19 — died after the car flipped three times, witnesses testified this week.

“When we were driving, this other vehicle hit us in the back,” Tafoya first told Assistant State Attorney Earl Fechter. “He hit us on the side. It was like a Suburban. It was a dark car, but I can’t answer what color it was.”

Several minutes later, when Fechter asked what caused the Explorer to roll over, Tafoya said: “When we were hit, that caused the vehicle to roll over. When we were hit on the side.”

The crash happened after a 13-year-old boy was stabbed during a gang-related scuffle outside of Regal Cinemas in Bonita Springs.

Senior Judge Jack Schoonover on Wednesday scheduled the trial to continue on Friday because he is unavailable today. Prosecutors are scheduled to finish their case Friday morning, when Hollander will begin calling witnesses to testify.

Tafoya said Wednesday that when he and four friends arrived at the theater, his friends hopped out and he parked the car.

He said 10 or 15 minutes later they returned to Tafoya in the Explorer and all left. But they didn’t jump the line and pull out onto U.S. 41 northbound by driving out of the entrance drive. Witnesses earlier had testified they saw a white SUV quickly leave through the entrance, not waiting behind the line of cars stacked to exit.

It was followed, they said, by a maroon or burgundy SUV or Suburban.

Gonzalez was driving the maroon Suburban that night, which Lee County Sheriff’s deputies found under a tarp in his family’s Estero parking lot after a tip came in to Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers.

Gonzalez could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

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