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Jelks not guilty of manslaughter in boyfriend's death; guilty of gun charges
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A split verdict left Regan Jelks at first despondent, then relieved.
A Trumbull County jury found the 22-year-old guilty of two counts of improper handling of firearms in a motor vehicle — but not guilty of the much more serious charge of involuntary manslaughter.
Jelks could get up to 18 months in prison and up to six more months in the Trumbull County jail, but she escaped a possible 11-year prison term. She’ll be sentenced March 9, after the Trumbull County Adult Probation Department conducts a presentence investigation.
The jury of six men and six women found her guilty of a crime that assumes she knew that her boyfriend of two years, Taemarr Walker, 24, of Warren, had put two guns in her car before he drove her to Risher Road, where he died in a confrontation with a Warren police officer.
But it found her not guilty of causing his death as a consequence of letting him put the guns into her car. Police said Walker grabbed one of the guns from under the front seat just before the officer fired at him.
Walker’s death on Oct. 19, 2013, led to tensions and threats of violence toward Warren police and within the Warren schools, culminating in the cancellation of a Warren G. Harding High School football game a short time later.
But last March, at the same time officer Michael Krafcik was being cleared by a Trumbull County grand jury in Walker’s death, it was indicting Jelks. She intially was held in the Trumbull County jail in lieu of $250,000 bond, but she was released about seven weeks later, after Judge Peter Kontos of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court reduced her bond to $100,000.
After the verdicts were read Friday, Jelks, of Warren and Detroit, hugged family and friends and declined to comment to reporters.
“The jury obviously saw through her lies,” Chris Becker, assistant Trumbull County prosecutor, said of the guilty verdicts. “That’s fine with us, though. I think it’s pretty clear that Regan Jelks learned a valuable lesson in life. It’s costing her a felony conviction as well as a misdemeanor conviction.
“They don’t allow people to drive around in their car and put guns in their car, loaded or unloaded. In this case, it resulted in the death of Taemarr Walker.”
Ronald Yarwood, one of Jelks’ attorneys, said Jelks is perhaps guilty of having “poor judgment in men” because of her association with Walker, who was sent to prison for a year when he was 19 for weapons offenses connected to the shooting death of another man.
He said he believes the case “has obviously gotten her attention.”
Jelks admitted in a taped interview at the Warren Police Department several hours after the shooting that she knew Walker had a gun when he arrived at the II Hype tavern a little after midnight Oct. 19 to pick her up.
He didn’t have a license, and she said she didn’t know how he got there. But when they left in her car, he insisted on driving and went to Risher Road, where he drove off the road into a ditch because of a tow truck blocking the road.
Krafcik, who was there to write a report on another disabled car nearby, checked to see whether Walker and Jelks were OK and immediately saw there was a problem because of an assault rifle in the back seat of the car and Walker moving toward the weapon.
After some negotiation between Walker and Krafcik, Walker lunged for the front seat, reached under the seat for a handgun and pulled it out. He died from three gunshot wounds.
Jelks was seen on dash-cam video from the second officer to arrive, wailing, “Please don’t kill me,” as the second officer and the tow-truck driver led her from her vehicle to a police car.
Walker’s brother, TaShawn Walker, 26, was charged with a separate killing exactly one week later, at a West Market Street gas station. That was connected to a Warren Township police report saying TaShawn Walker and his father confronted people at a tavern for purportedly celebrating Taemarr Walker’s death.