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Wilks has outburst after found guilty of aggravated murder
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Willie Gene Wilks Jr. looks at his family as deputies prepare to lead him out of the courtroom after a jury convicted him Tuesday of aggravated murder with a death-penalty specification.
YOUNGSTOWN
The jurors who convicted Willie Gene Wilks Jr. in a murder case will return to the Mahoning County Courthouse later this month to decide whether he lives or dies.
A jury of nine women and three men convicted Wilks on Tuesday of all charges and of death and firearm specifications after five hours of deliberations.
The jurors now must return for the penalty- determination phase, tentatively scheduled to begin April 28, during which Wilks’ defense lawyers will present evidence as to why they should spare his life.
Wilks, 42, of Elm Street, was convicted of killing Ororo Wilkins, 20, and felonious assault and attempted aggravated murder in the shooting of Alex Morales, 25, who survived being shot in the back.
Wilkins died instantly of a gunshot wound to the head.
Both were shot on the porch of a Park Avenue residence May 21, 2013.
Wilks was arrested the day after the shooting when he was seen driving a van belonging to Wilkins’ mother.
When the shooting occurred, Morales was holding a baby and Wilkins was reaching for the baby. The 5-month-old fell to the ground but was not hurt.
Wilks also was charged with attempted aggravated murder for firing a shot at Wilkins’ brother, Willie Wilkins, who was upstairs in the home when police say Wilks appeared with an AK-47 assault rifle. That shot missed Willie Wilkins.
Wilks was dating Wilkins’ mother.
Rebecca Doherty, chief of the criminal division of the county prosecutor’s office, said in her opening statement last Wednesday the shooting stemmed from a dispute with Willie Wilkins, who was upset his mother couldn’t withdraw money from a bank because Wilks had all her bank cards.
“I feel like it was justice,” Morales said after the jury rendered its verdicts. “It was a stupid act. It could have been handled differently. Somebody like that just needs to be in jail.”
“It’s all in God’s hands,” said Ororo Wilkins’ grandmother, Hattie Wilkins of Youngstown, adding that she considers the verdicts just. “God’s will will be done,” she said.
“I’d like to see him die just like he killed my granddaughter,” she said of Wilks.
Hattie Wilkins also lost another granddaughter, Maressia Patterson, 17, who died in a May 26, 2007, drive-by shooting on Ford Avenue. “I’m living through it again,” she said.
In March 2009, Judge Lou A. D’Apolito sentenced Deon Glenn to 35 years to life in prison after a jury convicted Glenn in that murder.
Wilks faces the death penalty in the Wilkins’ murder because he was charged with killing one person while trying to kill two or more people.
When Judge D’Apolito, of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, read the guilty verdict on the aggravated-murder charge, Wilks slammed his fist on the defense table.
After he was escorted out of the courtroom in handcuffs by sheriff’s deputies, Wilks yelled, “I didn’t do anything!” and kicked a hole in the wall next to the prisoner elevator.
The jury deliberated three hours Monday before being sequestered in a local hotel overnight and resuming deliberations Tuesday morning.
Defense lawyer Ron Yarwood declined to comment on the guilty verdicts.
Doherty declined to comment because the penalty phase of the case is still forthcoming.