A Columbus man is on trial for home invasion murder. He’s claiming self defense
Quincy Tyrek Wade was having a dispute with his estranged girlfriend when he entered a Columbus apartment through a back door and fatally wounded a guest there during a bathroom shootout, police say.
And he’s claiming self-defense.
Charged with murder, aggravated assault and home invasion, Wade goes to trial before Judge Bobby Peters this week in Muscogee Superior Court, where attorneys Monday picked a jury. Now 28, he could face life in prison if convicted of all the charges he faces in the Sept. 7, 2021, death of Maurice Jackson.
Police that day were called at 2:34 a.m. to Patriot Place apartments, 3700 Buena Vista Road, where they found Jackson, identified at the time as Maurice Vaughn Jackson, with multiple gunshot wounds.
Jackson, 26, was pronounced dead at 3:22 a.m.
Witnesses told detectives Jackson was among five people in the apartment when Wade, who’d had a long-term relationship with a woman who was there with her 7-year-old child, started banging on the door and yelling.
Others in the home included a woman who lived there and a male friend of hers, detectives said.
After coming to the front door, Wade circled to the rear of the apartment and entered through a sliding-glass door, investigators said.
Jackson, the girlfriend, and the woman who lived at the apartment retreated to a bathroom and closed the door, but Wade kicked the door open as he brandished a handgun, officers said. The woman who lived in the apartment ran from the room as Wade and Jackson, both armed with 9-millimeter pistols, opened fire, authorities said.
Wade’s defense attorney, William Kendrick, said the other witnesses were unable to tell police who fired first, and Wade claims that it was Jackson, and that Wade fired back to defend himself.
Kendrick claimed that Jackson had hidden in the bathtub with the shower curtain closed, and that Wade did not know Jackson was there until the gunfire began.
Wade was wounded in both legs. Jackson was hit in the chest, arm, hip and back, police said. The girlfriend was hit in the ankle.
Wade left a trail of blood as he fled the apartment and called a friend to take him a LaGrange hospital, where workers called police upon learning he’d been shot.
During his preliminary hearing three days later in Columbus Recorder’s Court, Wade said he had been on the phone with his estranged girlfriend that day, and she had invited him to the apartment. He entered through the rear because no one came to the front door, he said.
He said he found the girlfriend in the bathroom and shot Jackson after Jackson shot him.
Kendrick said Monday that Wade and the woman had a “toxic relationship” that was ongoing.
Police said that Wade had been in “constant contact” with the woman, who was pregnant with his child, and had been sending her threatening text messages, claiming to know where she was and with whom. He also had followed her to work and to other places she was known to frequent, detectives said.
Unusual motion
The trial has prompted an odd motion from the prosecution.
Chief Assistant District Attorney Don Kelly has asked Judge Peters to order Kendrick to avoid making dramatic gestures or mouthing words at jurors as the state questions its witnesses.
Kelly wrote that he observed Kendrick’s conduct the week of Aug. 22, when Kendrick was representing Ty’Shaun Sylvester, charged in the 2020 shooting of 20-year-old Quincy Atkins. Both Sylvester and a codefendant were found not guilty of murder in that case.
Kelly said Kendrick made “verbal and nonverbal interjections” while prosecutors in that trial were questioning witnesses.
“Mr. Kendrick, by way of example, will frequently throw his hands in the air, make hand gestures to jurors, mouth words to jurors, and make verbal statements about a witness’ testimony while that witness is under direct examination by the state,” Kelly wrote.
Arguing this distracts the jury and disrupts court, “causing interruption and disturbance,” the prosecutor asked Peters to “advise defense counsel of the proper confines in which he is permitted to communicate with the jury and to hold him accountable if he engages in this behavior.”
Kendrick declined Monday to comment on that motion, and said Peters has not issued any ruling on it.
Opening statements in the trial are scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday.
