PANAMA CITY — A Springfield man accused of mistakenly shooting a 17-year-old during a plot to kill a different man has been found guilty of manslaughter.
Javares Cameron, 19, was found guilty Thursday of manslaughter with a firearm and resisting arrest without violence in connection with the daylight slaying Curtis Hunt. Hunt was shot in the back of the head October 14, 2014, while sitting on a bench outside a home on Kraft Avenue.
Stark differences arose in the stories of how Hunt came to be shot. However, at the end of Cameron’s three-day murder trial jurors deliberated for about three hours before they determined he mistakenly shot Hunt while firing at 20-year-old Tyquan Anderson, a resident of the home.
Cameron could face up to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced July 6.
Kwanis Hunt, mother of Curtis Hunt, said she was disappointed by the verdict.
“I still don’t have peace of mind. It still doesn’t help,” she said as she teared up outside the Bay County Courthouse. “He took my son’s life and he’ll only do a little jail time.”
Kwanis Hunt said she and her family will be at the sentencing hearing to plead for the maximum time in prison.
Cameron faced life in prison if convicted for second-degree murder. But the prosecution seemed to have an uphill battle to prove the killing occurred because Cameron aimed to settle a grudge.
Cameron told jurors he was attacked by an unknown man wearing all black while he was trying to sell some hats to Anderson. After wrestling a gun away from the unknown man, Cameron said he blindly fired the fatal shot in self-defense.
However, prosecutors said Curtis Hunt died in a case of mistaken identity during a “targeted attack” intended to settle a score with Anderson.
Prosecutor Bob Sombathy told jurors that while some of his witnesses, such as Anderson, had an interest in the outcome of the trial, other non-interested witnesses corroborated the essence of their statements.
Sombathy told jurors that Anderson and Cameron had “bad blood” over a stolen pistol and had a couple confrontations in the days leading up to the alleged attempted hit on Anderson.
About 45 minutes before the shooting, there was a one-minute phone call between Anderson and Cameron, but what was said was unclear.
“That’s the way to make sure Anderson was at home,” Sombathy said. “This case is just as much about Anderson. He’s the one that should be dead.”
Sombathy also tore into Cameron’s testimony and highlighted inconsistencies with the physical evidence.
One striking detail occurred to medical responders treating Hunt. Even though an alleged skirmish involving guns occurred feet away from him, he didn’t turn around or pay it much attention.
“As (the medical personnel) was pumping air into his lungs, they thought it was odd he would have in ear buds,” Sombathy said.
And although Cameron claimed to be there to sell hats, police only found a single, dingy and bent New York Jets hat in the trunk of his car.
Following a scramble to find Hunt’s killer, police pulled over Cameron over across town at Royal Arms Garden Apartments. Cameron ran away and discarded the pistol over a fence.
Sombathy encouraged jurors to focus on Cameron’s actions when confronted by police.
“What in the world would make somebody run and risk getting shot unless you did something really bad and needed to get away,” Sombathy said.
In her closing arguments, defense attorney Kim Jewell said Cameron was summoned to Anderson’s home in order to rob Cameron of jewelry, and cited a text message questioning the whereabouts of Cameron about 45 minutes before the shooting.
She said Anderson was checking on Cameron to further the robbery plot. Cameron thought he would sell some hats before going to work and ended up wrestling over a gun, Jewell said. After Anderson drew a gun on him, Cameron fired the gun he took from the unknown man in self-defense.
“If you want to believe this beef was over a gun, wouldn’t that be an opportune time to rob someone who was not armed,” Jewell told jurors.
She also pointed to the physical evidence to corroborate Cameron’s story. She claimed the trajectory of the bullet supported it, unlike faulty eyewitness testimony.
Hunt “turned and looked. That’s the only way his head is turned in that direction,” Jewell said. “Curtis Hunt wasn’t supposed to die that day, but Javares Cameron wasn’t supposed to get robbed, either. Physical evidence like that can’t lie, it can’t be bent.”
Kwanis Hunt disagreed.
“If there’s a confrontation around him, he’s not just gone sit there,” she said. “He’s not like that.”
By the end of his closing arguments, Sombathy also indicted the values of a generation. He said the shooting was a retaliatory hit intended for another target. The call for murder boiled down to a slight disrespect, something that would have ended in a fist fight years ago, Sombathy said.
“Values have changed for certain people,” he said. “You disrespect someone, they go get guns. As crazy as that sounds, this is the world we live in.”