WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — Jurors have begun hearing closing arguments in the trial of five men accused in one of the deadliest shootings in Washington in years.

Closing arguments began Thursday, more than eight weeks after the trial began in Superior Court in Washington.

Prosecutors said when the case began in late February that violence in which five people died in 2010 began over a missing piece of costume jewelry, a cheap bracelet encrusted with fake diamonds.

The bracelet’s owner was Sanquan Carter, who in May 2010 spent an evening hanging out with a group at an apartment in southeast Washington. When he couldn’t find his bracelet at the end of the night he became enraged, the prosecution contends. Carter, now 21, called his brother and told him he’d been robbed.

According to the government, Carter’s brother, Orlando Carter, soon arrived at the apartment with an AK-47 assault rifle and friends also carrying guns. The men “took the law into their own hands,” prosecutors said, killing 20-year-old Jordan Howe and injuring two others in a spray of bullets.

A series of retaliation shootings then occurred. When the dust settled, five people died as part of three separate shootings on two different days in March 2010.

On Thursday, a government lawyer held up the bracelet as part of his closing argument and spoke to the jury with guns and bullets used in the shootings arrayed in front of him.

(TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)