TEEN HOMICIDE WITNESS: FELT BULLET ‘PASSING MY HEAD’
Passengers in car said they feared for lives after driver was shot.
Teens who said they were in the car with a Fairmont High School student when he was fatally shot on Labor Day weekend two years ago told jurors events unfolded chaotically and they feared for their lives.
One teen said she was in the back seat of Ronnie Bowers’ car Sept 4, 2016, leaving AlterFest in Kettering, when she heard something shatter the rear window and whiz by her head before watching the 16-year-old victim hunch over the steering wheel.
“At first I didn’t think it was a gunshot,” said the girl, now 16, as she described the scene to the jury Wednesday in the murder trial of Kylen Gregory of Kettering.
Gregory has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and related charges in the Willowdale Avenue shooting that authorities said led to Bowers’ death two days later. It was ruled Kettering’s first gun-related homicide since 2007.
Bowers and three friends were fleeing a confrontation with Gregory’s group when the shooting occurred, the girl told the jury.
“Ronnie starts driving away and all of sudden something goes through the window,” she said. “It went through the back window. It was in slow motion . ... My ears were blown.
“It went directly through the window, passing my head and hit Ronnie in the head,” the girl continued. “I kind of looked up and saw Ronnie slumped over the (steering) wheel.”
The car rolled toward Ackerman
continued from B1 Boulevard, and the girl said she jumped from the vehicle, fearing it would continue into the busy thoroughfare.
The scene became “blurry,” the girl said, and she ran toward a friend’s house. “I was scared.”
Cameron Wilson told jurors he was in the front seat when he heard what he thought was a gunshot.
“I just heard a big, loud bang and glass shattering,” said Wilson, now 18. “My head goes down and Ronnie’s head falls into my lap.”
After the shooting, the girl said Wilson caught up to her and she said he looked “freaked out.”
“He said ‘Ronnie’s dead’,” she added.
Wilson said he then called 911.
Both witnesses said they neither saw a gun being fired, nor the person who fired it. On Tuesday, defense attorney Jon Paul Rion didn’t seem to dispute that Gregory shot the gun, but did so to “send a message.”
Rion told jurors his client was not guilty of murder and raised the possibility that the shooting was instead reckless homicide.
Gregory has been in juvenile detention since the shooting and is being held on a $1 million bond. Three people who were said to be with Gregory at the shooting have pleaded guilty to lesser charges.
All three have been subpoenaed to testify. Two of them were juveniles at the time of the shooting. The third — Miles Heizer, 20 — is in prison on an unrelated conviction, according to his attorney.