With her boyfriend dead next to her, her toddler son screaming and bullets flying through their bedroom door, Alexis Symone Davis picked up the man's gun, returned fire at a mysterious assailant and didn't stop shooting until the pistol stopped working, she told a Pulaski County jury on Monday.
The 23-year-old Bryant woman was wounded in the June 2016 gunfire at the former Valley Heights apartments at 6900 Cantrell Road in Little Rock. Her 3-year-old son was shot in the stomach but survived.
Her boyfriend, 22-year-old Cordarelle Collins, died from a bullet that pierced his lungs and heart.
Davis said Collins managed to fire a single shot at their attacker before succumbing to his wounds and dropping the gun that she ended up using. Davis testified that she never saw the shooter.
Davis spent about 30 minutes on the witness stand testifying against Denzell Terrell Braud, the man authorities have identified as the unseen gunman and who is charged with capital murder and first-degree battery.
Braud, 25, was well known to both Davis and Collins because he was dating Collins' mother and living in the apartment with all four of them, deputy prosecutor Michelle Quiller said in her opening statement.
Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for the New Orleans native. Proceedings before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza resume at 10:30 a.m. today.
Defense attorney Lott Rolfe asked jurors to look at the evidence with a skeptical eye, calling on them to set aside the emotions they would feel, particularly about the wounded child.
Braud was the victim of a "rush to judgment" by both police and prosecutors, he said.
"Don't forget the standard before you today," Rolfe said "The state has to prove each and every charge beyond a reasonable doubt."
The first witness to testify, police officer Troy Dillard, was the first one on the scene. He told jurors that while clearing the residence for possible assailants, he found the whimpering and bleeding boy on the closet floor where Davis had hidden him when the gunfire broke out.
A tearful Davis could not bring herself Monday to look at police photographs of the boy, Khiry Davis, in his hospital bed.
She testified that the gunfire was a complete surprise. She had been awakened by Collins' phone ringing about an hour after sunrise, she said. The caller was his mother, and Collins immediately got dressed, saying he had to go pick the woman up.
The shooting started almost as soon as Collins walked out of their bedroom, Davis told jurors.
Questioned by deputy prosecutor Ashley Clancy, Davis described what authorities said were Collins' final words, addressed to his killer, a man the family called N.O., given his Louisiana heritage.
"I heard Cordell saying, 'Why you shooting me, N.O.? Don't shoot me, N.O,'" Davis said, telling jurors that she only knew Braud as N.O. until he was arrested.
Fleeing the barrage of bullets, the wounded Collins ran into the bedroom with his hands outstretched for his gun, which Davis said she got out of the closet. She said she put her son in the closet.
"I grabbed the gun and handed it to him," she said. "He fired one shot and fell down and died. I picked it up and started shooting back."
Davis said she could have fired as many as eight shots, testifying that she pulled the trigger until the weapon "jammed up."
Collins' mother, Sharonda Franklin, told jurors that she and Braud had been together six or seven years, and that most of that time was pretty good.
But his behavior had taken a sinister turn since his mother died in October 2015. The week before the shooting, Braud pulled a gun on her, accusing her of cheating on him, and told her there was only one reason he didn't kill her, Franklin testified.
"He said the only thing saving me was my grandchildren," she said.
The night Collins was shot, Braud had also accused her of being unfaithful, apparently sparked by something he saw on TV, Franklin told jurors.
"Something came on TV and ... he just flipped out," she said, describing how a muttering Braud took her phone and was deleting photographs of himself from it.
Feeling "the same kind of vibe" as the night he had threatened her with a gun, Franklin said she left their bedroom on the pretext of getting a drink of water.
Then she walked out of the apartment, taking nothing with her and meandering from Cantrell Road to the Kroger at Markham and Rodney Parham streets.
"I didn't know where I was going to go. I just had to get away," Franklin said. "I just had to get away from him."
The clerk at the Phillips 66 Superstop store on North Rodney Parham let her use the store phone to call her son to come get her, but he never arrived, Franklin said.
"I knew something was wrong when my son didn't come [right away]," she told jurors. "Something took my breath away, and I knew something was wrong."
One of the state's key witnesses, neighbor Dennis Driskill, lashed out at defense attorney Alicia Walton-Middleton while she was questioning him about what he told police.
Driskill said he saw a man he later identified as Braud go into the Franklin apartment, then heard a blast of gunfire a few minutes later. Driskill said he saw the same man, with two guns, fleeing the apartment.
Driskill bristled at Walton-Middleton's exacting questioning as she went over his police statement point by point. He took particular umbrage to her assertion that he had seen two different men that morning, not just one.
"I can't remember what I told officers two years ago. I don't have that kind of memory. I'm sorry," the witness snapped. "You keep insisting this is two different men. I didn't say that, you did."
The judge briefly halted the proceedings and sent jurors out of the room at Driskill's outburst. The judge told Driskill to get himself under control, then called jurors back in after a few minutes.
Metro on 08/21/2018