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Goleta Avenue murder trial underway
YOUNGSTOWN
Karen Kennedy had to relive the moment in June 2018 she saw her neighbor and close friend Diane Dent after Dent had been shot twice on the porch of her Goleta Avenue home.
Testimony in the aggravated murder trial of the alleged shooter Jesse B. Williams, 52, began Tuesday morning in Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge Maureen Sweeney’s courtroom. Williams also faces other felony counts of murder and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Jurors heard Kennedy’s hysterical wails on a recording of the 911 call she made, which prosecutors played, causing Kennedy to continue sobbing for several moments after the recording ended, in an otherwise silent courtroom.
“We were good friends. ... She had a big heart. She would give you anything,” Kennedy told the court. “It wasn’t nothing for me to come home and find potatoes or onions on [the] porch.”
Kennedy said she didn’t see Williams fire the shots that killed her friend, but identified Williams as the man she saw leave the scene immediately after and tell another woman there: “You better not say you seen anything.”
Prosecutors said Williams wanted “payback” from Dent’s son Anttwon Dent – with whom Williams had a previous altercation – but Diane was the one to greet Williams at the door that day, said prosecuting attorney Aaron Meikle.
“I anticipate the testimony will show the defendant was mad,” he said during opening statements. “Each [witness] has a different perspective on what happened that day. I expect you’ll see all those different perspectives complement each other.”
Williams’ defense attorney James Schoren, however, implored jurors to consider Williams’ side of the story, which suggests Williams shot in anticipation of Anttwon Dent attacking him.
Schoren said Anttwon Dent attacked Williams the day before Diane Dent’s death, in an apparent argument over Rebecca Perez, who may have been Anttwon Dent’s former lover, Schoren said.
Perez, 47, of Austintown, was also indicted on murder charges in Diane Dent’s death.
“The state’s evidence is now the whole story about what happened,” he said. “They will leave out one crucial piece of the evidence – ‘why did this happen?’”
Schoren said Tuesday that Williams himself is expected to testify and give jurors that answer. He remains in the Mahoning County jail on a $500,000 bond.
“There was no intent or purpose to kill anyone, especially a woman [Williams] had never met before,” Schoren said. “He was a pawn. He was a tool used by Anttwon Dent and Rebecca Perez to get back at each other.”
Perez is set for sentencing next month before Judge Sweeney, though court records do not indicate her jury trial proceeded, nor that she entered a plea.