PANAMA CITY — Stephen Trusty was found guilty Tuesday of shooting a man who stole his bike and threatening retaliation to a witness of the brutal slaying.
Jurors found Trusty, 33, guilty as charged of second-degree murder after more than an hour of deliberation. The jury also found him guilty of threatening one witness to the murder but did not find sufficient evidence to convict him of the threatening the other.
He faces life in prison during his sentencing on Feb. 20.
Trusty was charged with murder after police found 34-year-old Leonard Price shot to death on a grass eve between Roosevelt and Carver drives of Panama City on May 28. The jury watched video of Price leaving the area of room 118 of the USA Inn, 710 East 15th St., with the bicycle at about midnight. Police would be called to the shooting about 40 minutes later to find him dead from five gunshot wounds — two in the back.
Trusty left his clothes, medication and room at the USA Inn, and he headed toward Tampa as the murder investigation developed. But Tuesday he denied confronting Price over a “neighborhood bike” and killing him.
“I have no reason to kill nobody,” Trusty told jurors.
Trusty averted his eyes during the autopsy photos, glancing up occasionally before shaking his head and looking away.
Prosecutor Bob Sombathy said, though reason might not have played a part in the shooting, the two eyewitness accounts and phone records placed Trusty at the scene of the crime.
Trusty “was mad because someone had the nerve to steal his bike,” Sombathy said. “It’s hard for me to say motive because there is no motive to kill someone over a stupid bike.”
During the trial, two witnesses testified to seeing Trusty fire the fatal shots. Both Tanya Baker and Swanson Owens said they saw Trusty stand over Price and empty a .38-caliber revolver into him.
“He stood over the man, fired the rest of the rounds into him and that was it,” Baker said. Price “was rolling around on the ground — bleeding — hollering like he wished this was just a bad dream...”
Baker said he called Trusty at 12:11 a.m. after seeing Price on the bike leaving the USA Inn. Trusty met up with Baker in the neighborhood off MLK Jr. Boulevard and asked him to yell for Price to come over. Trusty then hid behind a house in wait for Price, Baker said.
Owens said he watched as Price walked over toward where Trusty waited. Trusty sprang out, pulled a gun and beat Price to the ground before one round rang out. Trusty then straddled Price and fired the remaining rounds in the revolver, Owens said.
Price “just kept screaming for help,” Owens said.
During much of the defense attorneys’ cross-examination Tuesday, Trusty’s counsel steered the focus to the statements of Owens. He was the first to identify Trusty, but he initially identified Trusty’s brother, Michael Ray Davis, as the shooter.
Baker waited about a week before contacting authorities.
Though Owens admitted to officers he’d identified the wrong man, defense attorneys used their uncertainty to discredit both men’s testimony during the trial.
Trusty made a similar case for jurors while explaining his decision to leave the county instead of facing authorities.
“People where I come from don’t call the police to talk to them, we run from them,” he said.
In his closing statements, Sombathy praised the witnesses for coming forth and testifying. He also pleaded with the jury to consider witness testimony to the brutal shooting.
“Most witnesses will never talk because they’re afraid will get done,” he said.
Trusty was also convicted of threatening retaliation against Owens’ family for identifying him in a line-up.