Trial starts for man accused of killing son
It was a week before Christmas 2013 when Jessica Phillips got a call asking if she could pick up her 5-year-old son from school because he was misbehaving.
Phillips had a job interview that day, so she asked the boy’s father and namesake, Darell Avant Sr., to get the boy from Pershing Elementary School. The elder Avant said he could, but Phillips left him with one warning.
“I told him not to put his hands on my child,” Phillips said in an Orange County courtroom Monday.
Avant is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his son, Darell Avant Jr., who died in his apartment Dec. 18, 2013. He could face the death penalty if convicted.
The child had 11 fractured ribs, punctured lungs, a cut on his spleen and bruising on his heart, Assistant State Attorney Ryan Williams said in his opening statement. Phillips said the child had scars on his inner thighs and neck from his father, which is why she told Avant not to hurt the boy.
When paramedics came to the apartment on Burroughs Court, off Hiawassee Road, the boy was not breathing and didn’t have a pulse.
Defense attorney F. Wesley “Buck” Blankner Jr. said the evidence against Avant is circumstantial and questioned how — and when — the boy was injured.
“I’d say he may as well have caused himself some of these injuries, by being 5, by being rambunctious,” Blankner said.
Phillips last saw her son the morning of the day he died, when she dressed him for school and sent him to walk to the bus stop with his sister and cousin.
On his way to school, he got into trouble with some of the older kids on the bus, said Elaine Lundberg, who at the time was a curriculum resource teacher at Pershing Elementary School.
Lundberg took Darell to the cafeteria for breakfast and sat him at a folding table by himself, she told jurors Monday. She left to watch other students and, within minutes, heard a loud screech, she said.
Darell was pushing the table away from him with his feet, making it loudly grind against the cafeteria floor, she said. He was smiling.
“Typically he had a smile on his face,” Lundberg said. “Mostly it was for attention. He liked attention — good, bad or otherwise.”
Over the next few hours Darell kicked a coach who was walking him down the hall. He tapped other students with a pencil until an art teacher took it away from him. And he hit another student in class, Lundberg said. Faculty members decided to call his parents to pick him up.
His father got the call and asked his neighbor, James Turner, for a ride to the school. Turner stayed in his truck with Avant’s younger child, a 1-year-old, as Avant went into the school for an hour-long meeting and came back out with Darell. He did not seem mad at the boy, both Lundberg and Turner said.
That afternoon, Turner was at a grocery store when he got a call from Avant, asking when he would be home. Phillips said she got a call from Avant that evening too, asking if the boy ever had a seizure. She said no and immediately called a family member for a ride to Burroughs Court.
Turner got home, left his groceries in front of his door, and went to Avant’s apartment, where he saw the little boy on the ground.
Turner said he told Avant to call 911 immediately and started doing CPR.
By the time Phillips got to the parking lot, Orange County deputies were already there. She didn’t immediately know it, but her son had died.
“When I got out that car, the officers were already standing out there,” Phillips said. “I asked what was going on, and nobody told me what was going on.”