MAHONING COUNTY Defense calls witnesses in fatal-shooting case

Prosecutors were expected to call some final rebuttal witnesses today.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A former Rutledge Avenue woman said she feared for her son's life the night she heard gunshots booming outside her house.
"My house was shaking," Lisa Rodriguez told jurors Monday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. "And there was big lights just popping off as he was shooting."
Then she decided to be nosy and look to see where the shots were coming from, she said.
Rodriguez was among witnesses called by defense attorneys Monday to testify on behalf of John Drummond Jr., who is on trial for a March 2003 shooting that left a 3-month-old baby dead.
Drummond, 26, is charged with aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, felonious assault and firing a weapon into a house. He could face the death penalty if he is convicted of the aggravated-murder charge.
What woman said
Rodriguez, who has since moved to another street, said she was talking to her boyfriend on the telephone that night, and getting ready to smoke a "blunt" -- a thick marijuana cigarette -- when she heard men talking outside her house.
She looked out a window and saw Wayne Gilliam and another man walking past her house, she testified. As she walked through her house to look out a door to see where they were going, she heard loud gunshots.
She ran to her living room where her young son was sleeping, she said, and carried him to a back bedroom and covered him with blankets. Then she went back to her living room to look outside.
"I was going to be nosy, to see what was going on," she said.
Rodriguez said she knows Gilliam because she had bought marijuana from him several times. She couldn't identify the second man, but said it was not Drummond, whom she knows from being neighbors.
Defense attorney James Gentile played an audiotape recording of a telephone call Rodriguez placed to Youngstown police April 5, about a week after the shooting. She called to say that they'd arrested the wrong man in Drummond.
"I'm telling you I saw the whole thing," she said on the tape, and she identified Gilliam as the shooter.
But during cross-examination by assistant prosecutor Timothy Franken, Rodriguez said she was walking through her house when the shots were fired and didn't see who fired them.
Franken also pointed out that Rodriguez is close friends with Drummond and his sister, and suggested that she was testifying only to get Drummond out of trouble, which she denied.
Gilliam was tried last year and convicted of charges identical to Drummond's. He is serving a 54-year prison sentence. Prosecutors said Gilliam drove Drummond to and from the shooting site, but they believe Drummond is the shooter.
Police say 10 shots from an assault rifle were fired into a house on Rutledge, with one of the shots fatally striking infant Jiyen C. Dent Jr. in the head. The baby was in a swing in the living room at the time. His parents were also home, but were not shot.
Another inmate testifies
Also testifying for the defense Monday was William Harrison, a Mahoning County Jail inmate who refuted prosecution testimony offered last week by Chauncy Walker, a former inmate.
Walker told jurors that Drummond had admitted the shooting to him while they were incarcerated in the same cell area last year.
Harrison, who has pleaded guilty to 35 counts of burglary and is awaiting sentencing, said Walker made up the story so prosecutors would give him time off his prison sentence. He said Walker tried to get him to do the same thing, but he refused.
Harrison denied Franken's allegations that he testified only because he is afraid of Drummond.
The trial was to continue today in the courtroom of Judge Maureen A. Cronin. Prosecutors were expected to call witnesses to rebut defense testimony.
bjackson@vindy.com