Victim: ‘I’m gonna be killed tonight’
Teen testifies of being shot for flirting; suspects defiant
A 16-year- old shot in both legs for flirting with the girlfriend of a gang member testified Wednesday about his terrifying attempt to outrun a shower of bullets.
“I heard nine shots,” Jeremiah Mayes told a Shelby County Juvenile Court judge during a hearing for two 17-year-olds who allegedly teamed up to seek revenge.
With help from his mother and a deputy, the victim slowly shuffled into court and headed toward the witness stand. He winced in pain as he described the Feb. 2 incident on Malone Avenue, south of Lamar near Airways.
Corey Mitchell, who has close- cropped hair, and his cousin, Robert Lindiment, who has dreadlocks — identified as members of the Hoover Crips gang — flashed guns at the victim outside the home of the girl’s father, the victim said.
“They just started talking smack to me,” Mayes said. Mitchell, whose girlfriend was the subject of the argument, threatened, “I’ll show you, you little weak ass (racial slur),” Mayes testified.
Mayes said he was scared and headed to his home nearby. He didn’t get far before he heard a car following him.
“I saw the car creeping behind me real slow with its lights off,” Mayes said. “I look back, and I see the one with the dreads hanging out the window with a gun.”
“I started running. I prayed, ‘God, help me! I’m gonna be killed tonight.’ ”
Mayes testified that Mitchell’s girlfriend had been flirtatiously smiling at him.
Lindiment, who dated the girl’s twin sister, told police he blamed Mayes for flirting with both sisters and confessed to firing at Mayes while his cousin drove his gold Buick.
Memphis police Sgt. Shawn Hicks said Lindiment reported
that the twins’ home is across the street from a rival gang, and “We grab guns when we know we’re fixin’ to go down there.”
Lindiment told the sergeant Mayes is a member of the rival gang and had been seen with an assault rifle days earlier, Hicks testified. When they began to argue over the twins, Lindiment said, he and his cousin pulled their guns out and began to fire first so as not to be outmatched: “We didn’t want to pistol play.”
Mayes insisted he was alone and walking home from a party when the cousins confronted him.
Animosity between the two sides spilled from the streets into the courtroom Wednesday.
The victim’s mother, who sobbed during her son’s testimony, frantically asked a deputy to escort them to her truck after she was threatened by the suspects’ supporters, who were gathered in the courthouse lobby.
Additional deputies stood around the suspects inside the courtroom after Lindiment defiantly twice refused to stand for the judge, a standard gesture of respect in the courtroom. Deputies repeatedly shouted at him: “Stand up, stand up, stand up!”
When prosecutor Dan Byer called Mitchell’s teen girlfriend to the stand, she glared and rolled her eyes, dodging most of his questions. Special Judge Dan Michael tried to assist, repeating a question about when her boyfriend left her father’s house the night of the shooting.
She whipped around to face the judge and retorted: “He left when he left.”
The judge transferred Mitchell and Lindiment to adult court on aggravated assault charges and included an attempted first-degree murder charge against Lindiment.
After the hearing, Lindiment’s attorney, Matthew John, said: “We have to look a little deeper with the problem of gang involvement. It’s not an excuse, but it’s an explanation.”