Man on trial for 2 deaths in separate Duval shootings on same morning
Just after 6 a.m. on July 20, 2008, 39-year-old Patrick Stafford was shot and killed in the front yard of a relative’s home off Kings Road in Jacksonville.
Less than three hours later, Dorsette James watched as two men stole his gray Ford Crown Victoria and drove away from a convenience store he had visited just a few blocks away.
By 10:30 a.m., a 16-year-old boy, Monquell Deshaun Wimberly, lay slain on the shoulder of the roadway in the 100 block of Kings Road after another shooting.
That’s the timeline Assistant State Attorney Mark Caliel laid out for jurors Tuesday as he pointed out the man who he said was a culprit in all three crimes that deadly Sunday morning.
Billy Jim Sheppard, 25, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, armed robbery, possession of a firearm by a felon and grand theft auto. If convicted of first-degree murder, he faces the possibility of the death penalty.
“This is a case of misidentification and the state of Florida has the wrong guy,” said defense attorney Chuck Fletcher during opening statements.
Fletcher was referring to one of the prosecution’s key witnesses, a security guard at an apartment complex near the Wimberly shooting who placed Sheppard at the murder scene.
Caliel said the security guard told police she saw someone draw a gun on the teen from the front window of gray Crown Victoria as he rode his bike down the road. She then heard gunfire as she ran in fear.
After calling 911, she said she returned and saw the face of a man she later identified as Sheppard pass within 10 feet of her, Caliel said, looking back at Wimberly as the car drove away.
“She had never seen him before but will never forget his face,” Caliel said. “… She knows she had looked face-to-face with a killer.”
The woman later identified Sheppard to detectives in a photo spread. But it was her previous identification of another man that the defense said discredits her account.
But Caliel told jurors that detectives had simply misinterpreted the security guard in the initial photo spread. He explained that what she meant was that the man she first fingered simply fit Sheppard’s description at the time, having dreads and full lips.
Adding to the security guard’s account is a web of physical evidence that Caliel said links all three crimes and ties in Sheppard’s co-defendant, Rashard Antwan Evans, 23.
Aside from their proximity, police first linked the two slayings when they found 9-milimeter shell casings at both crime scenes.
Forensic testing later revealed that most of the bullets taken from the two shootings were fired from the same gun, the prosecutor said. The presence of bullets that did not match up in the Stafford slaying suggests a second shooter.
Evans’ arrest reports said his fingerprints were eventually found inside the stolen Crown Victoria. Caliel added that both defendants were recorded in a video from inside the convenience store just before the car was taken.
Evans is set for trial in all three crimes later this month.
http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2...#ixzz1j6hBVJW0
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