Friends playing with guns ‘as if they were toys’ led to fatal shooting, lawyer says

Two young men in June 2015 were playing with loaded guns “as if they were toys,” aiming at each other and talking trash, when one pulled the trigger, fatally wounding the other.

Now a jury has to decide whether the shooting was purely accidental, or criminally negligent.

Jurors heard testimony Tuesday in the involuntary manslaughter case against Jarrett Marshall, charged in the June 26, 2015, fatal shooting of Trenton Hill, a “gun enthusiast” who that day was showing off his collection of eight or nine firearms outside his Andrea Drive home.

His friends Marshall and Jordan Day had come over to help Hill work on a Pontiac TransAm from which the engine had been removed. Hill’s employer was to bring a cherry-picker over to lift the motor and put it back in the car.

The three men were hanging out in a carport beside the vehicle when Hill and Marshall started playing with the guns, picking them up and pointing them at each other, a practice that for Hill was not unusual. “That’s just what Mr. Hill did. He played with his guns,” defense attorney Tim Flournoy told jurors.

Day testified that when he first pulled up to Hill’s home that day, Hill aimed a rifle at his car. When asked what he was doing, Hill replied, “Just waiting for you to enter my line of fire,” Day said.

Later Marshall picked up a Mossberg shotgun with a pistol grip, pumping it so a live shell was ejected and another chambered. He sat in a chair, holding the weapon.

Hill got another shotgun and pointed it at Marshall, who aimed the Mossberg at Hill, each “treating these guns as if they were toys,” Flournoy said.

According to Day, Hill told Marshall, “I’m not worried about what you have. You have bird shot; I have buckshot.” They in jest taunted each other some more before Day heard a blast and saw a muzzle flash from the shotgun Marshall was holding, and Hill collapsed.

The bird shot had hit him in the hand, chest and neck. He began bleeding profusely.

Day rushed over, picked Hill up, put him in Day’s car, and sped up Andrea Drive to Buena Vista Road, intending to go to St. Francis Hospital. Marshall stayed behind to put the guns away, but said he would follow.

On the way to the hospital, Day called 911 on his cell phone, lying as he repeatedly told a dispatcher that Hill had shot himself.

The 911 call came in at 6:21 p.m. “He shot himself,” Day said on the recorded call prosecutor George Lipscomb played in court.

“Trent! Trent!” Day could be heard shouting at his wounded friend, before telling the dispatcher, “I think he just died!” He later added, “He’s not moving.”

While sending an ambulance, the dispatcher told Day to pull over at a Walgreen’s drug store, 4808 Buena Vista Road, and wait for medics and police. Marshall later met them there.

Hill was pronounced dead at the hospital, and likely bled to death on the way there, Lipscomb said.

When police questioned Marshall, he also lied and told officers Hill had shot himself, though detectives could see Hill’s wounds could not have been self-inflicted.

Day testified he lied at first because he believed Hill would survive: “I didn’t think that he would pass away.”

Flournoy told jurors that Marshall initially lied to police out of fear of the consequences: “He was terrified. He was horrified. He was scared.”

When Day later found out Hill had died, he decided in consultation with his father and brother to tell police the truth, and informed Marshall. Day gave police the full story in a second interview the next day.

But what he told police then still differed from his testimony Tuesday, on a crucial point:

“I think it was an honest accident,” Day told police the day after Hill died.

When Flournoy asked Tuesday whether Day believed Marshall meant to shoot Hill, Day replied, “Yes, I do.”

Flournoy asked again: Do you believe it was accidental? “No,” Day replied.

Why? Flournoy asked. “Guns don’t accidentally go off,” Day said.

Such testimony could be crucial as the jury decides whether the shooting was only an accident or the result of criminal negligence.

Flournoy told jurors in his opening statement that an accident would mean the shooting was “unintended, unexpected, not meant to happen.”

He said “criminal negligence” would mean it involved a “willful, wanton, reckless disregard for others.”

Criminal negligence differs from “simple negligence,” which would warrant not a felony involuntary manslaughter conviction but one of misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter, under Georgia law, Flournoy said.

To illustrate simple negligence, he used the example of a motorist causing a collision by running a red light while checking a text message on a cell phone.

Both Lipscomb and Flournoy said the felony charge against Marshall is predicated partly on his causing Hill’s death while committing the unlawful act of pointing a gun at another person, a misdemeanor under Georgia law.

Flournoy acknowledged the two men’s conduct violated the first rule of firearms safety: “Never point a gun at somebody else.” But unlike Hill, Marshall was not familiar with firearms, and did not know what he was doing: “He doesn’t know what a safety is on a shotgun,” the attorney said.

Having pumped the Mossberg so that it ejected a shell, Marshall thought the gun’s firing chamber was empty, Flournoy said.

Marshall was 19 years old when the shooting happened. Day was 22, and Hill had just turned 21 the day before.

Marshall’s trial resumes Wednesday in Judge Ron Mullins’ court. If convicted of felony involuntary manslaughter, he faces up to 10 years in prison.

His is not the only involuntary manslaughter case moving through the Columbus courts, after a shooting resulting from a mishandled gun.

Last year 18-year-old Carver High School graduate Richard Cummings Jr. died after he was shot in a car on July 14.

Investigators summoned to the scene at 909 Farr Road said Cummings was in the front seat of the car when a backseat passenger fired a shot that penetrated Cummings’ back and lodged in his chest.

Police in that case charged Alex Antonio Wilson, 18, with involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct. A second suspect, Lorenza Davonta Madden, 19, was charged only with reckless conduct.

This story was originally published January 23, 2018 at 4:29 PM with the headline "Friends playing with guns ‘as if they were toys’ led to fatal shooting, lawyer says."