PANAMA CITY — A man accused of mistakenly killing a 17-year-old during what authorities called a “targeted attack” on a different man took the stand Wednesday to try to convince jurors he fired the fatal shot in self-defense.
Javares Cameron, 19, is charged with shooting Curtis Hunt last October. Hunt was shot in the back of the head while sitting on a bench outside a home on Kraft Avenue, according to prosecutors.
But Cameron told jurors during the second day of the trial that he fired the shot during a fight with two other men and inadvertently killed Hunt.
Cameron said he’d gone to the home of Tyquan Anderson, 20, to sell some hats. Anderson and Hunt were outside along with another man he didn’t recognize who was dressed completely in black and who commented that Cameron usually wore “flashy jewelry,” Cameron testified.
At some point a fight began.
“The person wrapped his arms around my waist and slammed me to the ground,” Cameron told jurors. “He was trying to get the upper position … I seen a gun in his waistband and I snatched it away.”
After getting to his feet and calling Anderson and the other man “every name in the book,” Cameron said Anderson pulled a gun on him and leveled it at his head. Cameron said he then fired blindly at Anderson.
“I felt like I was dead right there, like I was going to be shot,” he said.
But prosecutor Bob Sombathy argued that Cameron had designs on shooting Anderson because of “bad blood” over a stolen pistol. Sombathy also told jurors that Hunt didn’t stand up, turn around or remove his ear buds during the fight and armed stand-off.
Sombathy called several witnesses Wednesday, including 15-year-old Isiah Grady, passenger in the car Cameron drove to Anderson’s house.
Sombathy said all four of Cameron’s passengers had knowledge of the plot to shoot Anderson. Almost all of them carried a firearm, but the juveniles backed out at the last moment.
Grady said he, his 14-year-old brother Capri Brooks and a kid named “Rod,” who has never been apprehended, rode with Cameron that day to “go sell some hats.”
Grady said Cameron had a gun in his lap as they drove toward the “paper mill projects,” but nothing else seemed out of place. After Cameron parked the car on Kraft Avenue he got out with the gun.
He ran back about 15 minutes later, Grady said. He told jurors he remembered Cameron say, “I think I hit him.”
Nothing else was spoken between the passengers until police pulled over the car at Royal Arms Garden Apartments on Balboa Avenue.
“I’m about to run,” Grady recalled Cameron saying before most of the group ran off.
Cameron’s defense team pointed out several inconsistencies in Grady’s statements with police and his story Wednesday.
Grady was handcuffed and had an agreement with the prosecution to testify in exchange for leeway against the charges against him. When police initially questioned Grady, he said Cameron didn’t have a gun and that he saw Cameron leave the car with hats in hand. On the stand, he claimed the opposite.
“What leads us to believe you would not lie under oath to save yourself,” defense attorney Kim Jewell asked.
After a pause Jewell asked, “Any answer to that?”
“No ma’am,” Grady responded.
However, Sombathy told jurors that after police first questioned Grady, they showed him a Facebook picture of himself posing with a silver revolver. The picture was taken the morning of the shooting.
Grady began to tell the truth at that point, Sombathy said.
Cameron is charged with second-degree murder and resisting arrest without violence. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.
Attorneys will make their closing arguments Thursday and the jury is expected to return with a verdict.