North Little Rock man says romantic rival was killed by woman they'd both dated

Tyrun Lamont Jones
Tyrun Lamont Jones

Lawyers for a 26-year-old North Little Rock man accused of murdering a romantic rival say he's being framed by the real killer, the woman the men had feuded over.

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Attorney Robert Tellez made that accusation Tuesday before a Pulaski County jury on behalf of Tyrun Lamont Jones, who is charged with first-degree murder in the Christmas Eve 2014 slaying of Alex William Booker. The trial resumes at 9:30 a.m. today.

Booker, the son of Little Rock attorney and former Democratic legislator Michael Booker, was found shot to death about three weeks after his 27th birthday in the Shorter College Gardens apartment complex on North Beech Street, where the woman, 19-year-old Brianna Jordan, lived.

Jones was arrested after Jordan and her roommate, Anita Henderson, told detectives that Jones had opened fire on Alex Booker inside their apartment.

Jones is "not perfect," Tellez said in opening statements, telling jurors, without elaborating, that his client had been involved in a shooting before.

Court records show that when Booker was killed, Jones was on parole for shooting an ex-girlfriend, Shaterica Jones, in the stomach in May 2008, when she was 17 and he was 19.

Jones pleaded guilty to first-degree domestic battering for the shooting and accepted a 15-year prison sentence.

Tellez also acknowledged that Jones had made bad decisions related to Booker's slaying.

Jones had been cheating on his wife with Jordan, had deceived detectives about where he was when Booker was killed -- before he knew the man had died -- and had asked family members to lie to police about being with him on the night of the slaying, the lawyer said.

But lying and cheating do not make a man a "cold-blooded killer," Tellez told the seven women and five men of the jury.

Five times in opening statements, Tellez told jurors that Jordan was the one who fired the three shots into Booker's back and side.

The attorney said she and her roommate then cleaned up the apartment and lied to police about what happened to set up Jones to be arrested for the killing.

"She pulled a gun out ... and shot Alex Booker in the back as he was exiting the apartment," Tellez said. "They're lying, and due to their lies, they've put Tyrun Jones in jail."

Deputy prosecutor Amanda Fields warned jurors in her opening that they probably wouldn't like the women. But she said the women have always told the same story about how Booker was killed -- after Jones lured Booker to the apartment by using Jordan's cellphone to pose as her and send text messages to Booker.

"I'm not asking you to like them. I'm not asking you to take them home for dinner. I'm not asking you to let them babysit your kids. I'm asking you to listen to their stories and compare it with all of the other evidence," Fields said.

"For every lie Tyrun told, Anita and Brianna have been steadfast," the prosecutor said.

Jordan spent about an hour on the witness stand Tuesday. Her testimony included how she saw Jones shoot Booker and how she'd ended a sexual relationship with Booker before getting involved romantically with Jones.

She said she had kept up a friendship with Booker that angered Jones when he found out about it.

But the focus of the proceeding shifted from what Jordan was saying to how she was saying it after the prosecutors accused two of Jones' brothers of glaring at the woman from the audience in an effort to intimidate her in front of the jury.

Jordan answered questions in a voice so softly that sometimes the judge, David Laser, said he wasn't sure whether she had spoken at all.

Judge and prosecutors repeatedly urged her to speak up, and she sometimes mumbled answers with her voice trailing off into an even softer whisper.

"Is it hard for you to testify against Tyrun when his brother is sitting right there staring at you?" Fields asked.

Jordan replied that the demeanor of the two men, "kind of" made her nervous. Under the prosecutor's further questioning, Jordan said she did not want to come to court.

Prosecutors attributed her demeanor to fear, but the judge said he wasn't sure what her motivation was because he'd never met her before.

"I don't know whether she's reluctant or that's her general demeanor," Laser said.

After dismissing jurors, the judge heard testimony from Karla Brist, a victim/witness coordinator with the prosecuting attorney's office, who described the men's stares as "mean mugging" the witness while she testified, which was making Jordan "act reluctant."

Defense attorneys disputed Brist's descriptions of the men. The lawyers noted that she had been sitting several feet behind and to the side of Jones' brothers.

Brist also doesn't know the brothers personally, so she couldn't effectively judge their demeanor, Tellez said,

He described them as "focusing intently" on the trial.

The men, 25-year-old Marreo Montrail Jones and Trammel Vonte Jones, 21, moved to the other side of the courtroom after prosecutors brought them to the attention of jurors.

Both promised not to return to the trial when the judge said he'd rather have them voluntarily leave than bar them from the proceedings.

Two other young men who had been with Jones' supporters had left the courtroom earlier in the day just as bailiffs were preparing to remove them for similarly staring at witnesses.

Metro on 05/04/2016

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