Columbus man’s assault trial reset in case of child accidentally shooting mother
Anthony Maurice Gates was fighting with his girlfriend in front of her three kids when he held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her, prosecutors said.
When he put the gun on a bed to choke her with both hands, her 6-year-old son grabbed it and tried to shoot Gates, accidentally hitting his mother in the head instead, they said.
The bullet went through her mouth into her spine, leaving her in a wheelchair, unable to speak. Using a keyboard to type her answers, she is expected to testify in Gates’ trial, set to start Tuesday with jury selection.
It will be the second time Gates’ trial was expected to begin. It had to be rescheduled Nov. 14 when no one showed up for jury duty, because the summons for those jurors were never mailed.
Prospective jurors will be summoned to 2100 Comer Ave. to be picked for the trial, to be held in Peters’ courtroom in the Government Center tower.
Gates has been free on bond, awaiting trial. He was 26 when the shooting happened on Oct. 4, 2019. He’s now 29, and faces decades in prison if convicted on the allegations in his indictment:
- Aggravated assault with family violence for putting a gun to the woman’s head.
- Aggravated assault with family violence for choking her.
- Terroristic threats for threatening to kill her.
- Using a gun to commit a felony.
- Three counts of third-degree cruelty to children, for each child who witnessed the assault.
- Hindering a 911 call.
The evidence
Here, according to prosecutors and police, is what happened:
Officers were called around 2:45 a.m. to Piedmont Columbus Regional, where the woman was being treated in the emergency room.
She had been shot in her home at Alpine Apartments, 4225 Alpine Drive, where she and Gates lived together with her children, the older two ages 9 and 11, authorities said.
The children saw Gates choking their mother when the noise of the argument woke them up, Detective Kelly Phillips testified at Gates’ preliminary hearing on Oct. 9, 2019:
“They observed Gates in the bedroom with one hand on the victim’s throat and a gun to her head, telling the victim something to the effect of ‘I should kill you, but you’ve got kids,’” Phillips said.
When the woman gave her cell phone to her daughter and told the girl to call 911, Gates grabbed the phone and smashed it, the detective said. Then he set the gun on the bed and started choking the woman with both hands, Phillips said.
“At this point the 6-year-old child, watching his mother actively being strangled by Gates, picked up the firearm, pointed it at Gates, and pulled the trigger, unfortunately striking his mother,” the officer testified.
She said Gates afterward admitted to police that he’d had the gun, and that he had choked the victim. Police confiscated the weapon.
It was not the couple’s first domestic dispute, Phillips said: Checking police reports filed under the woman’s name, investigators found two more complaints naming Gates.
Prosecutors said Gates choked the woman at least once before, and they hope use that incident as evidence during his trial.
Children to testify
At a pretrial hearing last week, Assistant District Attorney Meghan Bowden said that besides their mother’s hand-typed testimony, jurors will hear from her children.
Witnesses so young may be unable to recall some details or their context and sequence, so their videotaped forensic interviews after the shooting also may be played, she said.
Gates is not the children’s father, but he shared a home with them and their mother for about three years, Bowden said, and he regularly drove the woman to work.
One of Bowden’s pretrial motions was to preclude any testimony of the mother’s working as an exotic dancer, at the time.
“She doesn’t work now because she’s in a wheelchair,” the prosecutor told Peters.
Gates’ attorney, Roberta Robinson, said she should be able to ask about the victim’s work if the witness claims to have had some other job.
Gates has been offered a plea deal: 20 years in prison with 10 to serve and the rest on probation. He has rejected that.
Whose fault is it?
During a bond hearing for Gates on Nov. 20, 2019, then-defense attorney Michael Eddings argued Gates was not responsible for the shooting, because he didn’t pull the trigger.
Eddings told Peters that after the child grabbed Gates’ gun, both Gates and the mother stopped fighting and focused on the 6-year-old, pleading with him to hand over the firearm, and that’s when the shooting occurred.
The bullet would have hit Gates, had Gates been choking the child’s mother, Eddings said.
Ray Daniel, the prosecutor in 2019, countered that Gates’ story did not match what the children reported, when each was questioned in a forensic interview at the Children’s Tree House Child Advocacy Center.
Those are the interviews Bowden expects to play, if the children’s trial testimony does not match their initial accounts.
Victims of domestic or family violence can get help by calling a national hotline at 800-334-2836 or the local Hope Harbour shelter crisis line at 706-324-3850.
This story was originally published January 2, 2023 at 5:00 AM.