Prosecutor: Victim not primary target of 2013 homicide

Dior Cheney lost his life to violence aimed at someone else, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The man accused of killing the 23-year-old on Oct. 29, 2013, had no reason to, Senior Assistant District Attorney Don Kelly told jurors hearing the murder case against Reginald Jamal Jackson: The two men didn’t know each other, and had no score to settle.

But Cheney’s traveling companion Travis Porter was another matter, Kelly said: Porter a year earlier had robbed a lifelong friend of Jackson’s, and Porter and Jackson’s friend that Tuesday had met again, with Jackson present.

They were at a Winston Road “trap house,” an apartment rented for dealing drugs, where Porter and Cheney had come from Macon, Ga., to buy a pound of marijuana, the prosecutor said. Porter, who had moved to Macon, was from the Columbus neighborhood, but Cheney, a Macon native, was not.

When Porter asked to meet a dealer, a mutual acquaintance set him up with the guy he earlier had robbed, Kelly said. The dealer drove over, but upon recognizing Porter, never got out of his car, and kept a pistol in his lap as he sat outside the trap house.

Porter and the dealer, Jackson’s longtime friend, never made a deal. Jackson, a regular at the trap house, came out to talk to his buddy, and as they talked, Jackson began to glare at Porter, the tension building to the point that Porter started asking bystanders why Jackson was eyeing him.

Meanwhile Porter and Cheney tried to sell clothing out of their car – kids’ clothes that likely were counterfeit brands, Kelly said. As the day grew dark, they decided to pack up and head back to Macon, he said.

It was around this time that Jackson, who rarely left the trap house, abruptly disappeared, Kelly said witnesses told police.

Porter and Cheney, who never got the pound of marijuana they came to buy, got into Cheney’s car, headed south on Winston Road to Head Street and turned east toward Benning Drive, where they came to a stop sign.

According to Kelly, this is what happened next:

At the stop sign stood Jackson, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and wielding a Glock 9 mm pistol with an extended clip. He fired 15 shots into Cheney’s car, leaving 15 shell casings in the street and riddling the car with bullet holes.

Cheney was hit twice, once in the head. He accelerated from Head Street across Benning Drive at the T-shaped intersection and rammed a utility pole off the other side of the road.

He died with his foot on the gas, the car’s engine roaring and tires spinning. Having come to buy a pound of marijuana, he still had nearly $900 in his pocket.

Wounded three times in the torso, Porter climbed across Cheney to get out of the car. He was fortunate to run across an old friend who drove him to the hospital, Kelly said.

A woman who lives near the intersection testified that before Porter left the area, he stumbled into her yard, clutching his side. Having just hit the ground upon hearing multiple gunshots, she wanted nothing to do with the stranger. “I told him he had to leave,” she said, and he did. She never called 911.

Other witnesses refused to cooperate when police arrived, Kelly said: “They ran into a lot of witnesses who didn’t see anything.” The same went for Porter, when police first caught up with him at the hospital. He was not on friendly terms with law enforcement.

Kelley said Porter over the years “did many different things, most of them not legal.” He was known to be a robber and drug dealer whose interactions with police usually led to his arrest.

Porter is not a credible witness, said Melvin Cooper, Jackson’s defense attorney.

Cooper said Porter initially told police questioning him at the hospital that he couldn’t identify the gunman, and he picked Jackson’s picture from a photo lineup only after visitors from the neighborhood told him Jackson was the shooter.

Police rushed to charge Jackson with no evidence beyond what Porter told them, Cooper said: “It just shows anyone can be arrested at any time,” the attorney said.

Jackson had no motive to shoot either victim, yet police framed him, Cooper said: “It’s a bad frame, ladies and gentlemen,” he told the jury. “It doesn’t fit.”

He warned jurors they were about to see evidence of a seedy side of Columbus, an area known for its drugs and violence. “It’s a culture out there,” Cooper said.

Kelly acknowledged authorities do not hold Porter in high esteem: After recovering from his wounds, Porter left the hospital without notifying police, who later caught up with him when they again arrested him for dealing drugs. He remains in jail.

The prosecutor admitted he has no idea what Porter will say this week on the witness stand: “Mr. Porter has been all over the place about this.”

Authorities also had to hunt down Jackson, whom U.S. Marshals found the following April in Riverside County, Calif., Kelly said. Two Columbus detectives sent there to bring him back said that on the drive back to Columbus, Jackson admitted having been at the trap house the day of the shooting.

The trial resumes in Judge Arthur Smith III’s Government Center courtroom on Thursday, when Porter is expected to testify.

Jackson, 25, faces charges of malice or intentional murder, felony murder for allegedly killing Cheney while committing the felony of aggravated assault, aggravated assault and using a firearm to commit a felony.

This story was originally published April 5, 2016 at 4:39 PM with the headline "Prosecutor: Victim not primary target of 2013 homicide."