Murder Trial Results In Manslaughter Conviction

Narrative per State Attorney’s Office:

The victim in this case was shot and killed at the intersection of W. Tennessee Street and Barineau Road on March 21, 2020 in the middle of the afternoon. The medical examiner estimated the victim to have been shot between 8-10 times all over his body including multiple times in the back and in his face.

On that day, witness at trial Kelly Ash, was driving the defendant and the victim around in her car and in order for the victim to collect money owed to the defendant – when the victim kept coming up short at each stop, the defendant got angry and engaged in a verbal altercation in the car with the victim. During that time Ms. Ash continued to drive until she saw the defendant pull out a black firearm from his backpack. She pulled over to the side of the road and told both men to exit her vehicle. When they did, the defendant shot the victim there on the side of the road as Ms. Ash pulled away and left the scene in her car. This was caught on surveillance across the street and the defendant is seen walking away leaving the victim on the ground to die. While the surveillance is not clear enough to see each person’s position or the faces of any individual, the figures are consistent with the defendant being the shooter and in the back seat, and the victim being in the front seat.

Ms. Ash stopped at a nearby gas station, called 911, and waited for law enforcement. She turned over her phone and her vehicle to be search and was interviewed as to what she saw. The defendant was found approximately 30 minutes after the shooting walking farther down Tennessee Street and was arrested. Along his path of travel a firearm was found buried in the wood line, and surveillance footage capturing the defendant going into those same woods just five minutes after the shooting was also obtained. His DNA was on that firearm, and Ms. Ash’s DNA was excluded from that firearm. The firearm was compared to all six casing found at the scene of the shooting and they were found to have been shot by that same firearm.

The defendant left his cell phone in the backseat of Ms. Ash’s car, and the victim’s phone was found at the scene of the shooting near his body. Those phones were searched and communications between the two individuals were discovered that depicted multiple weeks in which they were communicating about drug transactions. In these communications the defendant was getting increasingly frustrated and hostile with the victim for not paying him for drugs he received from the defendant. On the day or two leading up to the murder, the defendant called the victim over 20 times.

Defendant was sentenced to 30 years in the Department of Corrections.

The victim is survived by a mother, a wife and two children, who, during their victim impact statement, described a tragic downfall in the life of the victim in which he became addicted to drugs.