Man charged in friend’s death says he didn’t think shotgun was loaded

The young Columbus man accused of fatally wounding a friend while the two toyed with loaded shotguns in 2015 testified Wednesday that he didn’t know the gun he had was loaded and never meant to pull the trigger.

Jarrett Marshall is on trial for involuntary manslaughter in the June 26, 2015, death of his friend Trenton Lamar Hill, 21, who was hit in the neck with a blast of eighth-inch-diameter pellets commonly called No. 8 shot, typically used for bird hunting.

Before Marshall took the stand, forensic pathologist Jonathan Eisenstat testified an autopsy showed the pellets punctured Hill’s carotid arteries, jugular veins and trachea, and fractured his jaw, so he bled to death while struggling to breathe.

Some of Marshall’s testimony conflicted with that of witness Jordan James Day, who with Marshall had come to Hill’s Andrea Drive home that day to help Hill replace the motor in his 1999 Pontiac TransAm.

Day, 23, said Tuesday that when he got to Hill’s home, Hill had set out a collection of rifles and shotguns, all of which were loaded. Hill was a gun collector who sometimes in jest aimed at friends, and pointed a rifle at Day when he arrived, telling Day he was “just waiting for you to enter my line of fire,” Day said.

Day testified that as they worked on the car in Hill’s carport, Hill and Marshall picked up shotguns and pointed them at each other, taunting one another before Marshall intentionally pulled the trigger.

Before the fatal blast, Hill told Marshall, “I’m not worried about what you have. You have birdshot. I have buckshot,” Day said.

Marshall disputed that: He and Hill were not “trash-talking” each other, he said, and he didn’t pull the trigger on purpose.

“I didn’t even know the gun was loaded,” Marshall said.

He said they had been talking about one of the weapons, a Mossberg pump shotgun with a pistol grip, so he picked it up and pumped it, ejecting a shell. Though that same motion loaded another live shell into the firing chamber, he did not know that, he said, because he wasn’t familiar with guns.

He also did not know the gun had a safety catch that was switched off, or that he could have turned the gun upside-down and seen the live shell he’d just loaded, he said.

The gun went off, but he didn’t aim it at Hill, and he didn’t mean to fire it, he said.

“Did you intend to shoot Trent Hill?” defense attorney Tim Flournoy asked him.

“No sir, I didn’t,” he answered.

“Was it an accident?” Flournoy asked.

“Yes sir,” Marshall replied.

But that is not what he and Day told police that day: Both said Hill shot himself, possibly on purpose.

When the wounded man collapsed in the carport, they put him in Day’s car, and Day sped up Andrea Drive to Buena Vista Road, intending to go to St. Francis Hospital. Marshall stayed behind to put the guns away and collect the cell phone and wallet Hill left there, then followed.

Though Hill’s mother was inside the house, no one told her what happened.

Day called 911 from his car. “He shot himself,” he repeatedly told a dispatcher, who instructed him to stop at a Walgreen’s drug store, 4808 Buena Vista Road, and wait for an ambulance and police.

Marshall testified that when he got to the Walgreen’s, he had time only to ask Day what Day had told the police, and Day replied that he’d said Hill shot himself.

So Marshall perpetuated the lie, though police could tell from Hill’s wound that it could not have been self-inflicted.

Why did he lie?

“I was scared of spending the rest of my life in prison,” he said.

Day testified Tuesday that he lied because he thought Hill would survive. When he learned Hill had been pronounced dead at the hospital, he in consultation with his brother and father decided to tell the truth, and informed Marshall, he said.

But what he told police in his second interview conflicted with his court testimony: “I think it was an honest accident,” he told officers the day after Hill died.

It was not an accident, he testified Tuesday: “Guns don’t accidentally go off.”

The jury must weigh whether the shooting was purely accidental or the result of criminal negligence, which Flournoy described as a “willful, wanton, reckless disregard for others.”

Marshall’s felony manslaughter charge 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.

If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison. He was 19 when Hill died; he’s now 22.

When Flournoy asked how he felt about Hill’s death, Marshall said, “Just hurtful. I’m really sorry. Me and Trent used to hang out every day.... He was my friend. I kind of looked up to him.”

Flournoy and prosecutor George Lipscomb are to make their closing arguments before Judge Ron Mullins at 9 a.m. Thursday.

This story was originally published January 24, 2018 at 3:35 PM with the headline "Man charged in friend’s death says he didn’t think shotgun was loaded."