Georgia Supreme Court rules Columbus babysitter’s fatal shooting was no accident
A 17-year-old who fatally shot his 16-year-old girlfriend in the face as she babysat for a longtime friend in 2016 always claimed it was an accident, though a Columbus jury convicted him of murder.
The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed that conviction Monday, finding the evidence sufficient to show Lernard Bonner did not accidentally shoot Lakeisha Moses as she lay in bed in an apartment in Wilson Homes, where a 4-year-old girl witnessed the shooting.
The court’s decision clarifies what had been a confusing verdict, as a jury in April 2018 found Bonner guilty of involuntary manslaughter, felony murder and aggravated assault. Involuntary manslaughter would mean Bonner did not intend to shoot Moses.
Muscogee Superior Court Judge Ben Land threw out the involuntary manslaughter verdict, and sentenced Bonner to life on the felony murder conviction, based on Bonner’s killing Moses while committing the felony of aggravated assault.
Bonner challenged his conviction partly on the argument that Land should have given the jury instructions on the defense of accident, before they deliberated.
The Supreme Court rejected that. “Under Georgia law, in order to warrant a jury instruction on the defense of ‘accident,’ more must be shown than simply an unintended or undesirable outcome,” the justices wrote. “There must also be evidence of an absence or criminal intent or negligence.”
Bonner did not present such evidence, they said.
The shooting
Moses was shot around 9:20 a.m. on July 1, 2016, at the apartment where she regularly babysat a friend’s four children.
Bonner had stayed there overnight, and Moses’ friend found him in Moses’ bedroom that morning, sitting on the edge of the bed with a revolver. She told him she did not allow guns in her home, where her children might find them.
Bonner unloaded the revolver, put the bullets on a windowsill, and put the gun under his pillow.
Minutes later, the friend heard a noise she thought to be a firecracker, before her 4-year-old daughter came running from Moses’ bedroom repeating, “Baby shot my auntie!” The girl knew Bonner as “Baby” and called Moses “Auntie.”
The friend put all her children in a separate bedroom. She was going to Moses’ room when Bonner grabbed her in the hall and said, “I ain’t tried to. It was an accident,” according to court records.
Bonner left. The friend found Moses in bed, bleeding from her jaw. The bullet fractured her jaw and entered her brain. She was pronounced dead at the hospital at 10:57 a.m. that day.
Bonner was arrested the next day. The bullets he’d left on the windowsill were gone, and so was the gun.
Prosecutors argued Bonner must have reloaded the gun, pointed it at Moses and pulled the trigger, which required three to seven pounds of pressure, depending on whether the revolver was cocked to fire.
In it unanimous decision, the state Supreme Court wrote: “Bonner would have had to either pull the gun’s hammer back before firing or apply a greater degree of force to pull the trigger and fire. None of that evidence suggested that Bonner shot Moses accidentally. To the contrary, such evidence suggests that Bonner acted with at least criminal negligence, which negates his ability to avail himself of the defense of accident.”
Bonner was 19 when Land sentenced him to life with the possibility of parole, for which inmates typically serve 30 years before they are eligible for release.
Today he’s 22, and serving his time in the Wilcox State Prison in Abbeville, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.