Children testify in trial of Columbus man accused of assault that led to shooting
On the first day of a Columbus man’s trial for allegedly assaulting a 6-year-old’s mother, before her son got the gun and shot her while aiming for the man, jurors heard from the boy who pulled the trigger.
He shot her Oct. 4, 2019, hitting her in the face and leaving her unable to walk or talk. He is 9 years old now.
His older siblings saw the shooting, and they also testified Wednesday in Anthony Maurice Gates’ trial for aggravated assault and other charges.
Gates is not the children’s father, but shared a home with them and their mother at Alpine Apartments, where around 2 a.m. the children woke to screaming, ran to the mother’s bedroom and found Gates pointing a pistol at her, they testified.
The oldest child, a daughter who’s now 15, testified that Gates had checked her mother’s cell phone, and accused her of cheating on him with someone she had contacted.
“I could kill you, but you have kids,” she said Gates told her mother.
“He put the gun down. He was choking my mother. She was fighting back,” the teen testified, later adding, “I tried to pull him away.”
The girl said her mother gave her the phone and told her to call 911, but Gates put the gun down, grabbed the phone and smashed it.
Then her little brother picked up the gun, she said.
‘Water gun’
“I shot my mom by accident,” her youngest brother testified.
Prosecutor Meghan Bowden asked him what woke the children up.
“We woke up because we heard my mom screaming,” he said. “They were fighting, but Anthony started it.”
He said he thought he was shooting a “water gun” that “turned out to be a real gun.”
Besides the children’s testimony, Bowden showed jurors their recorded interviews at The Children’s Tree House Child Advocacy Center. She said playing the initial questioning was crucial because a child may see the context of an event differently: “They respond to trauma different than adults.”
In his forensic interview, hours after the shooting, the boy said, “My mama’s friend told me it was a water gun.”
He said his “mama’s friend” was Gates, the person he meant to shoot.
The gun did not work as he had intended, he said: “It actually hurts people you’re not trying to shoot.”
His interviewer asked how the gun sounded.
“A balloon that pops by itself,” he said.
‘Play fighting’
Jurors also saw video of the middle child’s interview. He was around 10 years old, in 2019, and is 13 now.
Both he and his little brother said their mother was “play fighting” with Gates, something Bowden claims Gates coached them to say as he rushed the woman to the hospital about 2:40 a.m. in his 2005 Ford Crown Victoria.
“I thought they were going to have a real fight,” the son who shot the gun said in his taped interview.
His brother recalled their race to the hospital, his mother, unable to speak, coughing up blood as Gates talked.
“He said don’t tell, or he was going to kill himself,” the boy said in his interview.
He was not supposed to tell anyone that Gates had choked her, he said.
The daughter in her trial testimony also recalled Gates’ suicide threat: “He was talking, saying he was going to kill himself.”
When they got to the emergency room, the woman was flown to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. The state took custody of the children, and police impounded Gates’ car.
Inside they found a 9-millimeter pistol, a spent round jammed in its ejector, and at least 12 more live rounds in the clip, a crime scene investigator testified. Police call that kind of jam a “stovepipe,” he said.
The defense
Gates is represented by Roberta Robinson, who said he typically had a “good relationship” with the children’s mother: “They were like peas in a pod.”
But they argued over money and property, and the fights turned physical, she said. Gates’ girlfriend beat him, in his face, head and chest, but then they forgave each other and reconciled, she said.
The night of the shooting, Gates discovered she was cheating on him: “He confronted her about it, and she blatantly lied,” Robinson said in her opening statement. When Gates gathered his things and tried to leave the apartment, she attacked him, “as he was walking out the door,” she said, and that’s when the struggle started.
Among the evidence the crime scene investigator said he found on the bed where the woman was shot was a strand of braided black and blond hair, about 16 inches long. Robinson said that came from Gates, who styles his hair that way.
The police also found two teeth. The bullet hit the mother in the mouth before it lodged in her spine, investigators said.
Because she cannot talk, the mother is expected to testify Thursday by typing her answers on a keyboard.
Gates was 26 when the shooting happened. 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.
He has been offered a plea deal of 20 years in prison with 10 to serve and the rest on probation. He has rejected that.
This story was originally published January 5, 2023 at 11:11 AM.