Body camera footage key on first day
The first thing officer James Avery saw was a 1-year-old gunshot victim being carried away in a blood-soaked towel. Then came the screaming. Avery rounded a corner inside the College Hill Courts apartment on Jan. 7, 2015, and found a woman, Bianca Horton, crying over a woman’s body. “Who are we looking for?” the officer asked. “Who shot her?”
Horton, 26, didn’t answer, and her friend, Talitha Bowman, never will.
Hamilton County prosecutors opened a 2015 murder trial Wednesday with the 11-minute body camera footage Avery took on scene that night. It’s one of the many pieces of evidence they believe will convict Cortez Sims, 19, of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and employing a firearm during the commission of a dangerous felony, in the homicide of 20-year-old Bowman.
Sims, then a 17-year-old member of the Athens Park Bloods, was motivated by a yearlong feud between his gang and a rival group, prosecutors say. “Sims went to that apartment and knocked on that door, went upstairs and pulled that trigger, multiple times, over Athens Park Bloods and Bounty Hunter beef,” Assistant District Attorney Kevin Brown told jurors during opening statements.
Prosecutors plan to present more evidence of that feud later this week. But first, they started Wednesday by calling multiple Chattanooga officers who either went to the scene or took part in the investigation.
Avery, an investigator with the Chattanooga Housing
Authority, ran into another room and found another victim that night: Marcel Christopher, 18, an alleged Bounty Hunter member whose name came up in a homicide of an Athens Park Blood six days earlier. Christopher has never been charged in that incident.
“Dude, we got a baby shot and need to know who did it,” Avery barked.
Christopher replied from the ground with a gunshot wound to his chest: “Cortez Sims.” “Who?” Avery asked. “Cortez Sims,” Christopher repeated.
“Who?”
“Cortez Sims!” Christopher shouted.
Sims was arrested two days later in an apartment complex in Knoxville, Executive Assistant District Attorney Lance Pope said. He was carrying three receipts in his pocket and a cellphone with no detectable messages, calls or other activity before Jan. 8, 2015, said Mark Hamilton, a civilian who analyzes technology for the Chattanooga Police Department.
Defense attorney Clancy Covert pointed out Hamilton had no way to tell whether Sims had any deleted messages on there. So far, he and attorney Lee Ortwein have challenged the state’s investigation into Sims and worked to change the venue and suppress gang affiliation.
After receiving Christopher’s statement on the body camera, Chattanooga lead detective Chris Blackwell said he got an attachment from Juvenile Court Judge Rob Philyaw to bring Sims into custody. Blackwell said he never had any other suspects.
Earlier Wednesday, prosecutors introduced a gun Blackwell recovered from a home in the 6000 block of Talladega Avenue on Jan. 8. One of Sims’ relatives lived there, Blackwell said, and thinking it could be helpful evidence, the detective sent it to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Investigators had already collected several 9 mm shell casings and projectiles from the College Hill Courts scene at 733 Main St.
But the gun was never connected to the College Hill Courts shooting, Ortwein said.
“It wasn’t that gun,” he said to Blackwell. “Correct,” Blackwell said. “It was returned to its legal owner,” he said.
“Correct,” Blackwell replied.
Criminal Court Judge Barry Steelman told jurors around 5 p.m. the state planned to call another witness who couldn’t make it because of the inclement weather.
Steelman sent jurors back into sequestration; the trial resumes today at 9 a.m.