A former Little Rock man accused of murder told a Pulaski County jury on Wednesday that he did everything he could to avoid what turned into a fatal confrontation with his wife’s cousin.
But the man was implacable in his anger and reaching for a gun, forcing Edward Charles Lee to fire, Lee testified on Wednesday.
Lee, 35, told jurors he’s innocent of wrongdoing because he had to shoot 22-yearold Tonio Dushun Davis to save himself. The younger man had ignored Lee’s warning shot, the defendant said, leaving him trapped on a neighbor’s front porch with nowhere to go. Lee said he closed his eyes and fired three times, all in self-defense.
Struck by each shot, with bullets piercing his heart and lungs, Davis died almost instantly, according to medical testimony on Wednesday, the second day of Lee’s first-degree murder trial. Proceedings before Circuit Judge Leon Johnson resume at 9:30 a.m. today.
Lee, who now lives in Marianna, testified he drew Davis’ ire that night when Lee tried to break up a heated argument between Davis and Davis’ cousin, Richard “Junior” White, by firing his pistol 10 times in the air.
Lee said he had been walking away from the squabbling men, but White’s mother, Guiwonna “Bonie” Wilson, asked him to go back and break up the argument in front of her home on Charlene Lane.
“I didn’t want to be a part of what they had going on, arguing, ready to fight,” said Lee. “I shot 10 rounds in the air to get them quiet … so I could calm them down.”
The gunfire made Davis angry and he cursed Lee for pulling a gun on him, the defendant said under questioning by his attorney, Lou Marczuk.
Lee said he showed Davis his empty hands so the younger man could see he was no threat and had tucked the weapon back into his pants. Lee testified Wilson called him to come up on her porch as he backed away from Davis.
But once he got on the porch, Wilson shut her front door on him, Lee said, and somebody whom he couldn’t see clearly would not let him inside. A cursing and threatening Davis was stalking up the porch stairs, Lee said, promising to kill him despite the warning shot.
“I was frightened,” he said, describing the moment before he decided to shoot. “I seen him reaching for his pistol. My back was against the door.”
Lee said he knew Davis to be a violent man who had broken Lee’s ankle in a fight two years before the October 2012 shooting. In the years he had known Davis, Lee said, the younger man had told him about shooting at other people and had once tried to get Lee to help him escape police after a shooting in Augusta. Davis bragged about his guns and showed off the weapons,Lee testified. He said Davis once talked about getting so angry with his grandmother Emma Turner that he considered pulling a gun on her.
Confronted about how his story conflicted with the testimony of sheriff’s deputies who twice interviewed him that night, Lee told deputy prosecutor John Hout the discrepancies were because officers either misunderstood what he was saying or were not paying careful attention to what he told them. Lee had told investigators he had not seen Davis with a gun and that he had been forced to shoot because Davis was reaching for his gun, Hout said.
“He didn’t write it down,” Lee said. “He mixed up my story somehow.”
During further cross-examination by Hout, Lee rejected testimony from other relatives that he and Davis had been friends, even after the ankle-breaking episode. Hout asked why Davis would call and confide in Lee about violent acts he had committed if they weren’t close.
“That’s how he was,” Lee said. “I would associate with him. We conversated.”
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 02/27/2014