CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A Harvard grad student who stabbed an 18-year-old high-school dropout to death lied and joked about his role in the street fight to investigators until he learned that the man had died, a state trooper testified Monday.

"He stated several times, 'I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry, I lied,'" Trooper Brian Canavan testified in the trial of 26-year-old Alexander Pring-Wilson, who faces life in prison if convicted of the first-degree murder of Michael Colono.

Prosecutors say that Pring-Wilson stabbed Colono five times with a 3-inch folding blade in the early morning hours of April 12, 2003. He allegedly walked up to the car that Colono and his two friends were sitting in and challenged Colono to a fight after the trio laughed.

The defendant says he was attacked by the victim and his cousin, Samuel Rodriguez, and that he used his knife in self-defense.

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Michael Colono succumbed to his wounds at 3:15 a.m. The police knocked on the defendant's door at about 6:45 a.m. to ask him questions.

Pring-Wilson came to the door in boxer shorts, looking "disheveled," Canavan said, but the only injury the trooper observed "was a welt above his forehead. It looked like a bump the size of a quarter above his left eye."

On the way to the station, Canavan said, Pring-Wilson referred to the welt on his head and said, "You guys must raise 'em tough around here."

"He said it kind of in jest," Canavan said.

Once they arrived at the station, the defendant asked for the detectives' advice. "He said, 'What do you guys think I should do?' We told him we could not provide any legal advice, that that was a decision he should make. He said OK and that he was willing to talk to us," Canavan said.

At that point, Pring-Wilson told the officers he had been on his way home to Somerville from a bar in Cambridge when he saw a two-on-one scuffle on the street.

"He said he thought he'd be a big guy and help out," Canavan said. Pring-Wilson stated, according to Canavan, that one of the men told him to "f--- off, bitch" and pulled a knife.

At about 1:52 a.m., the defendant called 911 and summoned police to the scene, indicating the different directions in which he thought the victim may have run.

In reality, Colono was in the car with Rodriguez and Rodriguez's girlfriend, Giselle Abreu. The group did not realize that Colono had been stabbed until minutes later. None owned a cell phone, and they tried to get a hospital, eventually pulling over at a 7-Eleven, where a police cruiser spotted them and dispatched an ambulance to the scene.

When Pring-Wilson was informed by detectives that Colono had died, he apologized for lying, was given private time to make phone calls and was arrested at about 8:30 a.m.

A hole in a leather jacket

During cross-examination, defense attorney Rick Levinson questioned the trooper about his interviews with Abreu and Rodriguez in an apparent attempt to create doubt about who was the aggressor that night.

"Isn't it true that Samuel Rodriguez told you that Michael came charging out of the car?" Levinson asked.

"Yes, he stated that," Canavan replied.

"Do you remember Miss Abreu telling you that Mike threw the first punch?"

"Yes," Canavan replied.

There were also questions raised about the black leather jacket Colono was wearing.

According to prosecutors, a cut mark through the jacket provides further evidence of the force Pring-Wilson used to stab Colono.

The defense contends that crime lab investigators made no notes about stab marks on the jacket, and it was not until the victim's family members returned the jacket to police that the cuts were noted.

"I observed there was a hole," testified Rodriguez's sister-in-law, Elizabeth, about finding the jacket in the backseat of the white Chevy, along with a six-pack of beer and a bottle of liquor. Rodriguez and her husband, Ricardo, picked up the car from a towing lot after police had briefly impounded it.

During cross-examination, Elizabeth Rodriguez conceded that Samuel Rodriguez and Giselle Abreu had access to the jacket during the eight hours she had it in her possession.

Alexander Pring-Wilson faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted.

Court TV is broadcasting the trial live.