Two Columbus men fired 16 rounds in fatal shootout. A jury must decide who was in the wrong
Two men in a tiny southside apartment bathroom at 2:30 in the morning fired 16 shots at each other as the pregnant woman they fought over cowered in a corner.
Only feet apart, Quincy Tyrek Wade and Maurice Vaughn Jackson kept pulling their triggers until both pistols jammed with empty bullet casings that failed to eject.
When the shooting stopped, the one-bedroom apartment at Patriot Place was filled with gunsmoke. Jackson lay dying on the bathroom floor, and Wade, shot twice through the legs, had fled, leaving a trail of blood from the apartment to his car.
That’s the story a Columbus jury heard Tuesday as testimony began in Wade’s trial for murder, aggravated assault and home invasion. He’s accused of killing Jackson on Sept. 7, 2021, after entering the apartment uninvited to confront his estranged girlfriend Channa Powell, who was pregnant with Wade’s child.
Represented by defense attorney William Kendrick, Wade does not deny shooting Jackson, but claims he acted in self-defense after Jackson shot him first.
Chief Assistant District Attorney Don Kelly said Jackson was the one who fired in defense of himself and others, as Wade had trespassed on the property and threatened to kill Powell, perpetrating a felony. Georgia law allows the use of deadly force to protect others and to thwart the commission of a felony.
The late-night shootout was the culmination of a years long “toxic relationship” between Wade and Powell, who fought often, sometimes violently, said Kendrick, telling jurors such affairs are common in “the real world,” where partners sometimes abuse each other in a “back and forth” series of disputes.
After the lawyers finished their opening statements, two eyewitnesses took the stand. One was Powell; the other was Rickell Paulk, who rented the apartment.
‘Why did you do this?’
Testimony showed Powell earlier had learned she was pregnant with Wade’s child, and they got into a fight when Wade questioned whether the child was his. In an exchange of texts on Sept. 5, Powell told Wade she no longer would communicate with him.
“I’m done with you,” Kelly said she texted him. “I do not want you involved in my life.”
The day before the shooting was Labor Day. Powell said she and Jackson spent the afternoon at a cookout with his family, then went to Paulk’s apartment, where Powell had been staying with her 7-year-old child. Jackson also was to spend the night there, along with a male friend of Paulk’s.
Powell said they got to the apartment about 12:30 a.m., and she started getting texts and calls from Wade, finally hanging up on him.
She and Jackson were watching TV in the living room when Wade came to the door and knocked loudly, she said. She told Jackson to get off the couch and get dressed, and he went to the bathroom, where Paulk was using the toilet, and hid behind the shower curtain.
When no one came to the front door, Wade circled to a patio entrance, and came in through a sliding-glass door that Jackson earlier had left unlocked, when he went outside to smoke, Powell said. Seeing Wade had a pistol in his hand, she also fled to the bathroom and locked the door, she said.
Wade kicked the bathroom door in, and Paulk got up and ran outside. Powell said Wade first put the gun to her head and then to her abdomen.
“He said he’d kill me and my child,” she said.
That’s when Jackson pulled the shower curtain aside, and the shooting began, she said. But she could not say for sure who shot first.
“I assumed it was Quincy, because he’s the only one who had a gun that was visible,” she said.
She said she squeezed into a corner until the gunfire stopped, then followed Wade out of the bathroom, asking, “Why did you come here? Why did you do this?”
Wade replied, “He shot me too,” she said.
She snatched his gun away as he went out the sliding-glass door to his car. Later he got a friend to take him to a hospital in LaGrange, investigators said.
Paulk, who returned after hearing Wade’s car leave the parking lot, said her apartment was full of smoke. She called 911.
“He’s bleeding everywhere,” she told a dispatcher, trying to describe Jackson’s wounds. “I’m not sure how many times he was shot.”
Shot in the chest, Jackson died in the apartment.
What’s self-defense?
Kendrick told jurors that Wade’s fights with Powell were so frequent and vicious that their confrontation was not unusual: “This was the nature of their relationship.”
Wade had visited Paulk’s apartment before, and had entered through the glass door, he said. Once he was told a key was hidden outside, so he could go in while others weren’t there, Paulk confirmed.
Wade did not force his way in, but used a door he’d used before, “the way he always comes in,” the attorney said.
He said Wade did not know Jackson was in the bathroom until Wade was shot, and he legally was allowed to shoot back to protect himself. “You can’t be the aggressor when you’re defending yourself,” Kendrick said.
Again he noted that the couple’s fights were common. “These things happen every day. Does Mr. Wade deserve to be shot for this?” he asked, later adding, “The question is: Does a man deserve to be shot for an argument with a girlfriend?”
Kelly told jurors that who shot first was not pertinent: Wade was the “primary aggressor,” under the law, having entered another’s home where he was not welcome, with a gun, to hunt down and threaten someone.