A man on trial on charges he gave his niece a revolver used to kill another teen girl over a Facebook beef testified in his own defense Friday that he brought the gun to the confrontation but never intended for the weapon to end up in her hands.
Donnell Flora faces first-degree murder and attempted murder charges in the death of 14-year-old Endia Martin, who prosecutors say was shot by Flora’s niece outside a home in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood in April 2014.
After the defense rested its case Friday evening, Judge Thaddeus Wilson instructed the jury to return to the Leighton Criminal Court Building on Saturday morning for closing arguments. They are then expected to begin deliberations to decide Flora’s fate.
The shooting suspect, whom the Tribune is not naming because she has been charged as a juvenile, is now 16 and has yet to stand trial.
Flora, in a wheelchair since a 2010 shooting left him paralyzed from the waist down, testified that he had repeatedly rebuffed his niece’s request for a gun in the runup to the encounter with Endia but agreed to go with her and two of her friends to confront the 14-year-old over bullying.
He said he brought the .38-caliber revolver with him for protection.
“I took my gun with me, in case I needed it,” said Flora, 27, who sat in front of the court reporter while testifying, occasionally slumping and mumbling his answers.
Across a grassy median from the fatal encounter in the 900 block of West Garfield Boulevard, Flora said he could not roll any further and gave his niece the gun with instructions to hand it off to the girl’s aunt, Vandetta Redwood.
Redwood initially faced charges in the case, but a judge dismissed them for lack of probable cause.
More Top Picks Best Heated Gloves
Flora also testified that he saw his niece give the gun to Redwood as they neared the scene.
“I told (the niece), ‘Vandetta would be right behind you … to protect you,'” Flora said.
Under questioning by Assistant State’s Attorney Athena Farmakis, Flora said he had not implicated Redwood before because he didn’t want to get her into trouble.
After his niece, then 14, went to confront Endia amid a crowd of shouting teens, Flora said, he saw a crowd scattering “like roaches” from the scene of the fight.
He said he did not hear a gunshot and started rolling away about five minutes later.
He said he felt “hurt” when he heard that his niece was involved in a homicide.
“I’d never think she’d do nothing like that,” Flora said.
Several of Endia’s friends and family members were in court, silently looking on.
A highlight of the one-week trial came when Lanekia Reynolds took the witness stand Tuesday and publicly described for the first time the confrontation that resulted in the death of Endia, her best friend.
Reynolds testified that the shooting stemmed from a feud that began when she started talking to a boy her rival had dated in seventh grade. Both girls began provoking each other on social networks for two months leading up to Endia’s death, she said.
At one point Reynolds stood up in the witness stand, raising both hands in a firing stance as she demonstrated how the 14-year-old had fired three shots after threatening to kill her. Reynolds, the intended target, escaped with only a graze wound to her left biceps, but Endia was shot in the back as she ran into their friend’s home.
“It was a whole bunch of blood,” Reynolds, now 18, said in a soft voice, fidgeting with a small package of tissues as she told jurors about seeing Endia on the kitchen floor of the house after the confrontation.
Prosecutors played for jurors a shaky cellphone video of the shooting in slow motion as Reynolds explained what was happening.
Twitter @JournoGeoffZ