Columbus child had gunpowder burns from mother’s fatal shooting, detective testifies
Chasity Walker’s 3-year-old daughter was so close by when her mother was fatally shot Saturday that the child had gunpowder burns, according to investigators.
“She actually got severe powder burns to the left side of her face,” police Sgt. Jeff Krause testified Monday during a preliminary hearing for Jamari Sider, who’s charged with murder in the 20-year-old woman’s death.
Walker and Sider were in a relationship marked by “numerous incidents” of domestic violence, according to investigators, at least one of which was reported to police before the shooting at a friend’s home in Columbus’ Carver Heights neighborhood.
Police respond to emergency call
Police called at 1:43 p.m. found Walker with a chest wound from a .22-caliber pistol. She was rushed to Piedmont Columbus Regional, where doctors pronounced her dead at 2:32 p.m., Krause said.
Sider remained at the scene of the shooting, where he told officers Walker was wounded in a drive-by shooting, the passing car a blue four-door sedan, the sergeant said. Taken to police headquarters for questioning, he was confronted with the fact that officers found a .22-caliber shell casing too close to the porch to have come from a passing car, Krause said.
Sider then said he accidentally shot Walker with a pistol he had in his coat pocket, but that also did not match the evidence, because his coat pocket had no bullet hole, the detective said.
The powder burns on the girl’s face showed Walker was shot from close range, and no fabric from a coat absorbed the residue ejected from the gun barrel, according to investigators.
Police later found the pistol inside the residence, where Sider told officers he threw it afterward, Krause said.
‘Devastated’ by Walker’s death
Sider’s attorney, Michael Eddings, conceded police had sufficient evidence to send his 21-year-old client’s case to Muscogee Superior Court, but maintained the shooting was accidental.
“My client is devastated,” Eddings said after the hearing. “It was an accidental shooting, and he lost somebody that he loved dearly…. We just want to go forward, let the evidence speak for itself, and hopefully that evidence will demonstrate that this case was a case of an accidental shooting.”
Krause had testified that witnesses inside the home heard the gunshot, but did not see the shooting. Eddings said Sider went in immediately to have the woman living there call 911 – “to get somebody there as fast as possible, to possibly save his girlfriend’s life.”
Sider held without bond
He said no dispute preceded the shooting. “No one heard any disturbance. There was no motive to do any ill will toward his girlfriend, or anything like that.”
The two had been in a relationship for around two years, but had no children together, he said.
Judge Julius Hunter ordered Sider held without bond, and instructed him to have no contact with Walker’s family.
This story was originally published December 28, 2020 at 12:26 PM.