Plot summary af filmen 'The Witness'

Rachel Lapp’s husband and Samuels father is dead. Several days after the funeral, Amish widow Rachel and young Samuel depart for Baltimore to visit her sister who’s an Amish too. It is the first time in a big city for Samuel. At the railway station in Philadelphia Samuel is the sole witness to a brutal murder. He walks alone to the toilet and at the same time a man was murdered by a strongly built African American man and another man who he did not see. John book and his partner takes Samuel to the police station to make him chose the man who possible killed the man at the railway station. Instead of identify a man of the photos that book and his partner shows him, he recognize a man on the press photography. The man on the photography was Lieutenant James McFee. Book is surprised and calls his mentor, Chief Paul Schaeffer, at the same time. Unaware that Schaeffer ordered the murder. Shortly after, McFee engages Book gunfight and shoots him right in the abdomen. Deducing that Schaeffer told McFee and is therefore a corrupt cop himself, Book contacts his partner, Carter and tell him to destroy all records of the case in order to hide the location of Samuel’s home. Book sneaks Rachel and young Samuel out of the city and drive them home to their farm rural Lancaster Country, Book is badly wounded on his way home but Rachel’s father-in-law decides to help Book because he’s wounded and he sleeps on their farm for a couple of days. When he stays with them Book starts to fall in love with sweet Rachel. Her father-in-law discovered their relationship and warns Rachel to love an English man.