RICHMOND, Va. -- Jury deliberations will resume Wednesday morning for two of the five men charged in the shooting death of 15-year-old Tynashia Humphrey.
Their trial resumed in Richmond on Tuesday after several issues delayed its anticipated end on Friday.
Humphrey was walking home from the store with family when prosecutors said she was caught in the crossfire of a shootout near Gilpin Court on the evening of September 12, 2022.
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She was killed walking home. Two men are now on trial for her murder.
Tyree Coley, 21, and Savonne Henderson, 24, are being tried together and have pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Both men are charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, shooting in a public place, and shooting from a vehicle.
The prosecution rested its case shortly after 11 a.m. Tuesday after calling their final witness, a total of 19 were called (and one testified twice).
The final witness was an FBI Special Agent who analyzed data for cell phones alleged to be associated with the five suspects.
Once the prosecution rested, the defense made a motion to dismiss the charges arguing they had not met the standards for the case to go to the jury.
Among the defense attorneys' arguments, was that it had not been ruled out that one of the bullets fired by the man being attacked (who fired back) was the one that killed Humphrey.
The prosecution argued witness testimony of Humphrey running away from the two cars. They added the forensic report said she had been shot in the back. They added the bullet fragments found near Humphrey (no bullet was recovered from her) could not have come from the other person's gun.
The defense also argued that prosecutors did not establish that the cell phones belonged to the suspects, had no eyewitnesses say their clients were at the scene or surveillance video showing them during the shooting.
The prosecution said the cellphone data was corroborated by photos of the defendants before and after the shooting.
The judge denied the defense motion and said there were issues for the jury to decide.
The defense did not call any witnesses.
You can read CBS 6’s coverage of day two here and day one here.
Closing Arguments
Following that ruling, the two sides and the judge agreed upon jury instructions and brought them back in for closing arguments.
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Katherine Groover spoke first and said Sept. 12, 2022 was Humphrey's last day on earth because of a senseless act of gun violence committed by the accused. As a result, she added, Humphrey's family would not be able to see their loved one grow up and see what type of person she would become.
Groover reiterated that Humphrey was returning from the store with two nieces when, as one of the nieces described, they saw two cars in the middle of the intersection of N. First St. and E. Charity St. with three Black males in the dark-colored car in the front with the two passengers holding guns -- one was wearing a ski mask and other was fat with twists or wicks for a hairstyle.
Then, as they finished crossing the intersection, the shooting began and Humphrey ran down the sidewalk away from the cars, while the niece ran behind a nearby tree. As Humphrey was running, Groover said she was shot in the back, fell down, and never got up.
Groover said the men in the car were members of a gang called "30 Boyz", or associates of the gang, and were shooting at a man that Coley had an ongoing beef with. That man, she said, testified on the stand that he took cover behind his car, which was facing away from the shooters, before returning fire with his .40-caliber Smith and Wesson.
She said at this time, Groover said the witness said the second, lighter car started firing. Which the niece testified to being louder and faster gun shots.
Groover then played a video for the jurors that she said shows the moment of the shooting when you see the two cars drive into the intersection, pause, then drive off.
She added investigators found shell casings for a 9mm, .357mm, and .223mm guns in the intersection and they were three shooters and two drivers. Prosecutors allege Henderson was the driver of the first car, a black Hyundai, and Coley was one of the shooters in the same car.
They added investigators found a .38-caliber bullet lodged into the back of the other shooter's car and found the same type near where Humphrey's body was. She said it was determined that a gun used by the other shooter could not fire that type of bullet, but two of the three types of guns they said were fired from the intersection could (no gun was ever recovered that was tied to the two cars, only the other shooter's gun when he gave it to police later in the investigation).
Groover then went through the process that investigators used surveillance video around Gilpin to get vehicle descriptions and used those to find clearer pictures of the cars on a nearby license plate reader that identified plates for the two cars.
The first car found was the lighter-colored car, which belonged to a now former girlfriend of another of the accused, Rarmil Coley-Pettiford, and the girlfriend testified said she had allowed Pettiford to drive it on the 12th. Pettiford was driving the car on Sept. 13, 2022 when he was stopped by police and Groover said police found two ski masks and unused ammunition that matched either a 9mm gun or a .223.
The other car was used owned by the girlfriend of Henderson and both of them were in the car when it was stopped by police a few days later. Groover said they found medical paperwork belonging to Henderson and a cellphone that was attributed to him.
She said based off the cellphone data from the phones they attributed to Pettiford and Henderson, they began to track their movements and it placed Henderson at the Essex Village/St. Luke Apartment 45 minutes before the shooting and corroborated that with surveillance video they said shows Henderson getting out of the black Hyundai. She said you also saw Coley and Hudson getting into the car and they also became suspects.
Groover added their identities in the video were not just confirmed by investigators, but by Henderson's girlfriend, and she put Henderson as the driver, Coley in the rear passenger seat and Hudson in the front passenger seat. Groover said from there, the trio left the apartment complex with a plan to meet Henderson's girlfriend and others at a bowling alley. But, when the three arrived, a fourth person, Rashard Jackson, was with them and he also became a suspect.
Groover said Jackson was involved in a Sept. 22 traffic stop where they found a cellphone attributed to him. Then Coley and Mitchell Hudson, the fifth suspect, were involved in a traffic stop and had cellphones recovered from the car that were attributed to them.
Groover said using the data from the five phones attributed to the suspects, an FBI Special Agent was able to analyze their data and developed seven areas of interest.
The first was the apartment complex, where he said Coley, Hudson, and Henderson phones were pinging off towers in that direction (and was corroborated by the surveillance video). Groover said they then moved to Jackson's house and argued she believes that is where they met up before heading to the crime scene.
She said Pettiford then drove the second car with Jackson inside and both cars went to a BP gas station. Groover said there was surveillance video viewed by a police officer (but was not saved properly in order to be viewed by the court) that showed the two cars there for several minutes (but were out of view of the camera for a time). This, again, she said matched what cellphone data was showing.
Groover then said several of the phones stopped sending or receiving data, "went dark", and it was their position that that is what someone does when they know they about to commit a crime -- turn their phones off, because everyone knows you can track phones these days.
She said Pettiford and Henderson's phones were still on and they believe they either forgot or were using them for directions and they are the two alleged drivers. She said the data on those phones showed them moving into Gilpin Court and that was corroborated by the license plate reader.
Groover said that in every video they had, it was black car, then light color, including when they arrived at the intersection. First the black car entered, paused, left. Then the light car. Groover said the pause was to allow the passengers to fire their weapons.
She said the three phones then appear to be sending information again and show them going back to Pettiford's dad's house. She said Pettiford's data shows him returning to his house, while the other four go to a bowling alley in Midlothian. She added the suspects in the Essex video appeared to be wearing the same clothing in the surveillance video from the bowling alley.
Groover then told the jurors that the suspects acted in concert and even if someone was just the driver, they were just as responsible and should be found guilty of first-degree murder. She added they fired reckless shots over 20 times and it is what caused Humphrey's death.
She also addressed the prison phone recording of Henderson talking to his girlfriend before the trial and said he spoke of witnesses, including the girlfriend, not coming or cooperating with prosecutors and if they did not come "we good". But, Groover added, they did come and did cooperate and "he's not good".
She asked the jury to find Henderson and Coley, who she said is the reason for all of this, guilty.
Henderson's Attorney's Closing Arguments
The first defense attorney to address the jurors was Stephen Mutnick for Henderson.
He first told the jury that there was no evidence his client fired or held a gun and no evidence that he drove through Gilpin at the time of the shooting. He added there was no evidence as to which gun fired the shot that killed Humphrey.
Mutnick reiterated comments he made in his opening remarks that police and prosecutors rush their investigation into the case and what they presented (and did not) in the trial showed that.
Mutnick said the video of the intersection at the time of the shooting was not the actual video, but a cellphone recording taken later that day, as the original was not saved in time. He added with the BP gas station video there was not even a secondary recording and it just was not saved before it was deleted.
He added the evidence investigator did not determine if any cars had driven over the crime scene, potentially disrupting the shell casings on the ground, but said they saw first responders drive over them.
He added in court, one of the police officers involved in the investigation opened up an evidence bag containing one of the ski masks with his mouth and did not use gloves to handle it. Mutnick said investigators did not even realize until the week of the trial there was a time discrepancy on one of the surveillance videos.
He then implored the jurors to look at the evidence, not listen to what the prosecutor said in her closing, and said they will find they lack proof that either man was involved in the "tragic" crime.
Mutnick said he was not saying people in those two cars did not fire the shots, but that you could not say that either man on trial was in the car when it happened and their involvement was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
He said since no witnesses, including the nieces with Humphrey, put them at the scene, prosecutors had to rely on circumstantial evidence.
Mutnick then raised issues with the person being targeted in the shooting, who fired back, and noted he tried to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self incrimination and has a prior conviction of moral turpitude, which the jurors could use to judge his truthfulness. Mutnick added the witness said he believed he was charged in a separate case just to compel his testimony in this one, so he was going to say what they wanted to hear -- including that he did not fire in the direction of Humphrey.
He added that it was telling that the witness did not stay on the scene after the shooting and did not go to police the next day, but they came to him and he did not want to give up his gun or car to investigators.
Mutnick added the witness said Coley could be the only person responsible, because of an "incident" and they had ongoing issues for 1-3 years, but no information was presented about this.
He said the Commonwealth was trying to fit square peg into a round hold and told jurors to take what he said with an "ocean full of salt".
Mutnick then focused on who fired the fatal shot as the prosecution had to prove it came from someone among the five suspects.
He said the .38-caliber bullets found in the witnesses car and near Humphrey were red herrings and the Medical Examiner could not tell what caliber the bullet was or how close it was fired from. Mutnick added it was reasonable that Logan fired the fatal shot.
Mutnick added there was no evidence that Humphrey's body was not moved after the shooting when people were attempting to save her life.
Mutnick then pulled up the video from the intersection when the shooting happened and said there was someone seen on video who comes into view, falls then does not move for the rest of the video. He added that when she fell the two suspect vehicles had cleared the intersection by eight seconds and that it makes perfect sense that it was Humphrey, but prosecutors will say they don't know who it is.
Mutnick added that his client's DNA was never identified on any of the swabs taken from inside the two cars. He said prosecutors will give reasons for that, but argued it is just more evidence they do not have.
As to the cellphone data, Mutnick he raised issues about police saying it was Henderson's phone. He said they found it in the car he was stopped in, but no testimony that it was on his person.
He added the FBI Special Agent used the expression "approximate" to describe where the phones were based on the data. He said for the times when there was no surveillance video, it is possible someone could have gotten out or in of the cars.
Regarding the prison phone call, Mutnick painted it as another red herring and said Henderson was not as eloquent as him and it was Henderson's attempts ot describe what he (Mutnick) has told him.
In the end, Mutnick said the prosecution's case was made up of guess work and not enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Henderson was in the car, had shared intent, or was involved in any way. He asked them to not let the emotion of the tragic loss divert what they were here to do.
Coley's Attorney's Closing Argument
Next was Coley's attorney, Gregory Sheldon, address the jurors and said the prosecution was asking them to make a series of assumptions and said there is no evidence that Coley was in the car at the time of the shooting.
He said no witnesses saw Coley in the car, the one he was alleged to have gotten into at the apartments, and said the niece who testified said one person had a ski mask on and the other was fat with a hairstyle similar to Coley's. He said Coley is not fat and in video later from the bowling alley, he was not seen wearing a ski mask. He added niece said she did not recognize either defendant in court.
Sheldon added no DNA was linked to Coley in either car and said the prosecution would argue the mixture was too complex to get a sample to test, but it just meant they could not present information of where he was. He said the witness said they had to pick the most important pieces to send back for testing as they were limited in what they could send to the state lab and what they sent did not yield a hit for Coley.
Sheldon also raised the question of not knowing where Humphrey was moved by first responders or by-standers after she was shot.
He also questioned how investigators tied the cellphone they did to Coley as it was found in a bag in a car that he was stopped in and it was determined to be his by process of elimination. But he said they did not present any texts or emails or photos to further tie him to the phone. Sheldon added there were emails not associated with Coley tied to that one, but prosecutors did not go further into that.
He directly asked about one bit of testimony from the FBI Special Agent when Coley's phone was supposed to be making a call, but the surveillance video from the apartments at the same time does not show him holding a phone. He said either it meant that was not Coley in the video or if it was him, it was not actually his phone.
Sheldon also told jurors, like Mutnick, it is up to them to determine the credibility of the other shooter who testified, about the lack of details on the alleged feud between him and Coley, and spoke to the possibility that Logan could have been the one who shot Humphrey. He also brought up the eight seconds between the cars leaving in the one surveillance video and the person seen on-camera falling.
He added the witness said he did not see anyone in the car he could identify and is the one who proffered Coley as a suspect to police.
Sheldon told the jurors that it was the evidence that counted in the trial, not the emotion and asked them to acquit on all charges.
Prosecution Rebuttal
Groover was given a final chance to respond to the comments made the defense before jurors went back to deliberate.
She said Mutnick had argued that since there was no evidence Henderson fired a gun, she was asking jurors to convict him on concerted action. She said that is the law and not something she was making up. She added Henderson's own girlfriend put him in the car and if he was the driver for this shooting, that is concerted action.
As to the allegations they charged the other shooter with another crime in order to testify, Groover said "we didn’t but him" and he said himself prosecutors were not giving him anything.
As to the lack of witnesses testifying either man was at the scene, but said both cars had heavily tinted windows and it showed they did a good job of concealing their identity. For the lack of DNA evidence, Groover said it was not uncommon in a common area of a car that there would not be enough DNA from one person that could be tested against -- as was the case for many of the places swabbed.
She added neither suspect was eliminated as having been in the car, just that there was not enough DNA to test.
As to the theory that the other shooter was responsible for killing Humphrey, Groover called it the "most absurd argument you can make" and pointed to the testimony that Humphrey was running away from the two cars, never towards, and the medical examiner said she was shot in the back.
For the video where both defense attorney spoke about a person falling after the two cars left the intersection, Groover said she was sure a lot of people were falling to the ground as it was a drive-by shooting and there was no evidence that person was Humphrey. She added Humphrey's own niece said Humphrey fell before the other shoot began firing back at the two cars.
For the dispute over the cellphone attribution to Coley, Groover said there were five people in the traffic stop including Coley. One person had a phone on them, two females claimed two phones, another had a picture of themselves as the background, leaving the last one to be Coley's -- as she said who does not have a phone in this day and age.
Even if it was not his phone, she said what would that mean? If you saw Coley in surveillance video in the same location as the cellphone data, that meant someone was mimicking his movements.
She added if Coley got out of the car at some point in between appearances on surveillance video and gaps in his cellphone data, how did he end up meeting with them at the exact same spot later? He was either mimicking their movements or he was with them.
Groover said the defense was asking the jury to consider reasonable doubt and she asked if it was reasonable to disregard what Humphrey's niece said and the corroboration between cellphone data and surveillance video.
Groover said there was no reasonable doubt and asked them to convict.
This is a developing story, so anyone with more information can email newstips@wtvr.com to send a tip.
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