The murder trial of a 50-year-old Little Rock man accused of killing a 15-year-old prankster in front of his house last year opened Tuesday with few facts about the girl's late-night slaying in dispute.
But defense attorney Ron Davis is challenging the charges against Willie James Noble, telling a Pulaski County jury that prosecutors have brought the wrong charges against the married father of four sons.
"The state charged him with something he's not guilty of," Davis said in his opening statement to the eight women and four men of the jury hearing evidence before Special Circuit Judge Ernest Sanders.
Noble is charged with first-degree murder and six counts of committing a terroristic act related to shots fired into the car carrying McClellan High School freshman Adrian Broadway and her teenage friends, all friends of the defendant's teenage son.
The shots came after the teens had smeared mayonnaise on the younger Noble's car in the middle of the night Valentine's Day 2014.
Broadway and her friends had been at the Noble family's Skylark Drive home earlier that night to throw toilet paper and tree leaves on the vehicle.
Davis called Broadway's death "gut-wrenching," promising there would be no claim Broadway or the six other teenagers with her had done anything to deserve being shot or that Willie Noble felt he was acting in self-defense.
The attorney urged jurors not to rush to find Noble guilty out of sympathy for the circumstances of the girl's death or in a frenzy to place blame for her death.
If jurors applied the law correctly to the circumstances of Broadway's killing, they would have to acquit his client, Davis said.
He will show them how prosecutors went wrong at the end of trial, he said.
"All we're asking you to do is follow the law, even if it takes you to a place you don't want to go," he said.
According to testimony Tuesday, Broadway and her friends made two trips to the Noble home to prank Davian "Buppy" Noble after he had "egged" another teenager's home.
The group was supposed to be spending the night at 17-year-old Tanesha Lewis' home but had left, supposedly to get food at Taco Bell.
The group never went to the restaurant, instead deciding to "toilet-paper" Noble's car. Five teens made that first trip.
But the two girls who threw the tissue, Derrika Garrett and Broadway, couldn't get the paper wrapped around the car.
"We was going to tissue Buppy's house. We was going to get him back," Lewis told jurors. "They didn't know what they were doing because the tissue didn't go nowhere."
So, picking up two more teenagers, Joshua Griffin and Jocelyn Jackson, the carload of seven went back to try again, this time with eggs and mayonnaise taken from Lewis' home.
They wanted Buppy Noble to enjoy the joke, another girl, 17-year-old Kortazha Williams, testified.
"That [first attempt] is not going to make him laugh," she told jurors.
On the second try, Broadway threw eggs at a house across the street, the home of another friend, while Garrett applied mayonnaise to the car.
Williams said she remembers a giggling Broadway running back to the white Hyundai Sonata and squeezing into the front passenger seat with her.
"She was giggling, saying go, go, go," Williams said. "We heard gunshots and ducked down."
"Everybody was screaming" as the car drove away, but not Broadway, Williams testified.
Four teens got out of the car when it slowed down to turn onto Chicot Road, she told jurors. Griffin and Jackson left, but Williams and Garrett followed the car on foot.
"My pants leg was wet [with blood]," said Williams, telling jurors blood was pouring from Broadway's nose. "I kept calling her name. She wasn't saying anything."
At Williams' urging, the driver, 19-year-old Kristopher Deshone Nelson, drove them to a nearby convenience store where they called for help, Williams said.
She described Broadway as gasping for air through half-closed eyes, and Williams imitated the wounded teen's rough breathing for the jury.
A bystander at the store urged Williams to apply pressure to the girl's head wound, and Williams said she kept talking to her friend while they waited for the ambulance.
"I kind of like held her, telling her she was going to be OK, and I wasn't going to leave her," Williams said. "I kept telling her she was going to be OK."
Broadway died about 2½ hours later.
In his opening statement, chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson told jurors that Noble had heard the teenagers' toilet-paper attempt, gotten his gun and waited for them to come back, angry over their "childish pranks" and wanting "revenge."
Noble admitted to shooting at the teenagers' car in an interview with police, the prosecutor said.
"He loaded [the pistol] and he stayed up, waiting and waiting. There's an adult who didn't have the sense to act like an adult," Johnson said. "Everything Adrian was going to be was gone because he was angry that someone had messed with his kid's car."
Proceedings resume at 9 a.m. today.
Metro on 11/04/2015