Two children tell Little Rock jury of seeing their mother's boyfriend shot dead

A 14-year-old boy squirmed and covered his eyes on the witness stand Tuesday as he described seeing his mother's boyfriend shot dead in front of him on a southwest Little Rock street last year.

The killer was the man he called "Uncle Don," Exavier Rogers told a Pulaski County jury on the first day of the capital murder trial of Donald Lee Brown.

Damon Kirk Wilkins was found shot dead in front of his Fairfield Drive home, where the 38-year-old man lived with his girlfriend, 37-year-old Chameka Rogers, who is the boy's mother, and her twin daughters.

Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for the 47-year-old defendant, who is the brother-in-law of Chameka Rogers' sister, Tanya Brown.

Proceedings before Circuit Judge Leon Johnson are scheduled to resume at 9:30 a.m. this morning.

Donald Brown was arrested about five hours after the September 2016 slaying, identified by Rogers and two of her children as one of the two men who shot Wilkins. The second shooter, whom witnesses only knew as Dough Boy, has not been charged.

Wilkins was killed because his apology to Brown was not good enough for the defendant, prosecutors said in opening statements.

Brown, his brother Roosevelt Brown Jr., his nephew Courtney Brown and a fourth unidentified man had shown up uninvited at the house the night of the killing. Wilkins and the Rogerses had just moved in a couple of days earlier.

When Wilkins went outside to see the men, he somehow got into a heated argument with Courtney Brown, 22, possibly because he did not know Donald Brown or his connection to his girlfriend, according to testimony.

The police were called by someone who claimed that Wilkins had threatened the younger man with a gun, but all of the men were gone by the time officers arrived.

After police left, the Browns came back. Wilkins apologized for losing his temper and welcomed them.

Wilkins was killed while standing next to Tanya Brown's pickup, talking to her through the driver's side window and apologizing for losing his temper with her son, Courtney Brown, prosecution witnesses said.

Asked to recount the night's events, Exavier's discomfort and anguish were so obvious that Brown's lawyers questioned whether the boy, who turns 15 in about a month, really understood what was going on.

His voice came in whispers sometimes so quiet it was like he hadn't spoken. A few of his answers burst out in mumbled run-on sentences.

But almost always as he spoke his hands were knotting and unknotting, his fingers stretching out as he answered questions for 28 minutes in front of the the seven women and five men on the jury. Several times when the questioning paused, he asked if he could leave, saying he wanted to go home or back to school.

Asked at one point by the defense to explain something he'd said, Exavier appeared frustrated that his answers did not seem to be enough.

"That's my first time seeing somebody get killed before," the teen said.

Exavier said he was sitting in his aunt's pickup watching Wilkins talking to the 42-year-old woman when Donald Brown walked up and started shooting the man.

Tanya Brown drove away when the shots started, the boy said, driving to the East 21st Street home of his grandmother Betty Jean Brown, where both women told him not to tell anyone what he'd seen.

The teen admitted that he had initially lied to police, claiming he had only heard the shots. But Exavier said he told the detectives the truth the first chance he got to talk to them again after hearing Wilkins' voice inside the house calling his name.

"I think when he got shot, his spirit walked into our house," the eighth-grader told jurors.

Asked whether he saw Wilkins' killer in the courtroom, the boy, with closed eyes, slumped heavily in the witness seat. His lips moved but, if he spoke, his words were lost to the audience.

Asked again by senior deputy prosecutor Leigh Patterson, Exavier jerked upright, gesturing with his right hand toward Donald Brown.

"I said I'm not blind. I see him," the boy said, with his left hand over his eyes.

"Thank God," he exclaimed loudly a moment later when the judge dismissed him. "Thanks, judge."

Following Exavier to the witness stand, his 15-year-old sister Chamisha Rogers was as insistent in her testimony as her brother had been reticent.

She too said she saw Donald Brown shoot Wilkins. And she locked eyes with the defendant while identifying him as one of the two gunmen she saw shooting at Wilkins that night. She only looked away from the man when deputy prosecutor Kimberly Woods asked the girl to turn away and listen to her questions.

But the girl's manner grew too defiant for the judge when she called defense attorney Lisa Walton a "b***h."

The judge briefly recessed the jury to admonish Chamisha Rogers -- and to quietly order a public defender to appear in court today to represent the teen.

The girl had just testified that she believed her brother had called police that night to report that Wilkins was threatening Courtney Brown with a gun. But when the defense confronted her with the 50-second recording of the 911 call, Chamisha Rogers admitted that the voice telling dispatchers Exavier Rogers was calling, was really her.

Have you lied about anything else, Walton asked.

"That's it, b***h," the girl responded.

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