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Teen tells court of texting Dillard
The victim was not shot at close range.
LISBON — A former Wellsville High School cheerleader said she and Eric Dillard were sending each other romantic text messages late April 22, 2008.
But the text messages stopped shortly after a shooting in which Dillard is accused of killing an East Liverpool man.
Amber Dalrymple, now 18, said her cell phone communication with Dillard, 31, was, “almost all texting.”
She testified Monday in Columbiana County Common Pleas Court that they sent text messages to each other every day.
Dillard is on trial, charged with murder with a gun specification and illegal possession of a weapon because of a previous drug conviction.
He could get 15 years to life in prison if convicted of the murder charge. He claims he shot Jamie Farley, 35, of East Liverpool, in self-defense, outside Dillard’s home on Commerce Street.
Dalrymple said that on April 22, she left her car nearby and went to the Dillard home at 906 Commerce St. in Wellsville so her parents would not know where she was.
She knew that Dillard’s girlfriend, Trisha Miller, was in West Virginia trying to obtain a truck to move clothing that Dillard sold that was stored at a building in Wellsville.
Dalrymple testified she stayed very briefly, then left. Shortly before 10 p.m., which was her curfew, she said received a text message from Dillard saying he “could look at me all day.”
She thanked him by text, but he did not reply.
“He always texted back,” she added.
Under questioning by prosecutors, she said Dillard had not expressed any fears. “He never mentioned Jamie Farley,” Dalrymple said.
A short time after her last text, authorities said, Dillard shot Farley twice. He died later at East Liverpool City Hospital.
Farley had invested about $21,000 in Dillard’s clothing business but had questioned Dillard about the low return on that investment.
Dr. Dan Galita, a deputy coroner for the Cuyahoga County coroner’s office, testified the first shot fired by Dillard “perforated the heart and the liver.”
The first bullet was the one that killed Farley, Dr. Galita added.
Farley was shot a second time in the torso.
The shots, he added, “were from left to right and downward, not straight on,” Dr. Galita told the jury.
Curtis Jones, the supervisor of the trace-evidence section of the Cuyahoga County coroner’s office, received Farley’s shirt that had two bullet holes in it.
Jones testified that gunpowder residue on the shirt showed the two shots were fired “outside of close proximity.”
James Smith, an employee of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, testified that a tray that would hold 50 bullets was found in Dillard’s home.
The bullets in the tray, in a spare clip, in the gun and that were fired added up to 50 bullets.
No other gun has been found. Wellsville police said they searched the area around Dillard’s home after the shooting and even looked in storm drains.
Miller called police the day after the shooting to see if authorities had checked to see if a gun had been thrown down a drain. Police looked again but found no weapon.
wilkinson@vindy.com