It’s why — not who — in Bolton case
When Marquis Wright stepped out of his aunt and uncle’s house on Summerlane Avenue on Aug. 1, 2015, to smoke, a relative’s Mercedes-Benz was already in front of the house, parked facing the wrong direction, he told a Shelby County Criminal Court jury on Wednesday.
In the passenger seat was a man he didn’t know, who he’d later learn was Tremaine Wilbourn.
A few minutes later, a while after 9 p.m., a Memphis police cruiser pulled up and shined a light at the car, he said.
Wright testified his relative jumped out of the car, left the door open and took off on foot. The police officer pulled Wilbourn out of the car.
As they tussled, Wilbourn shouted for someone to record what was happening, he said.
“He tried to push the officer off, pulled his gun out and started shooting,” Wright said.
The officer, Sean Bolton, 33, died that night. An autopsy found he was hit eight times.
Wilbourn, 32, is on trial for first-degree murder, and the state is seeking the death penalty.
Wright testified that after the shooting he went inside to get his uncle, Christopher Lanier, who used Bolton’s radio to call for help.
Prosecutors also called Wright’s rela-
tive to the witness stand who told the court he felt that his life was in danger. The news media was prohibited from recording him or using his name.
That man testified that he and Wilbourn, nicknamed “T-streetz,” were longtime friends and were together at the Montgomery Plaza Apartments in South Memphis when he got a call from a marijuana customer who wanted to be “served.”
Wilbourn asked to ride with him, and they went to the witness’s relative’s home on the 4800 block of Summerlane near Perkins and Cottonwood before delivering the weed.
Within minutes, there was a flash of light.
“When the light flashed in the car, I just grabbed everything I had and ran,” the man said.
He ran past five or six houses, jumped a fence and heard shots being fired.
The man said he had his phone and started to call his girlfriend. He also contacted his marijuana customer, who took him to his apartment where his girlfriend picked him up.
The witness said he spent the evening calling his attorney who called him back the next morning.
“I met my lawyer at the Starbucks on Poplar,” he said. “He didn’t believe my story until somebody told him what happened and we came Downtown to the homicide division.”
He told police Wilbourn was in his car and shot the police officer.
Police later found marijuana in the Mercedes, which the witness said belonged to him.
Also on Wednesday, the jury heard from Memphis Police Department dispatcher Lawana Stamps who was trying to locate Bolton on the night he was killed.
It was a bad night, she told the jury, as she explained how she heard him briefly on the radio in what sounded like a scuffle.
Stamps also said other officers went to Bolton’s last known location for an alarm call and how other officers were trying to locate him.
“Is it fair to say it got really, really hectic really, really fast,” asked prosecutor Alanda Dwyer.
“That’s an understatement,” Stamps said.
Then, Lanier was on Bolton’s radio telling them that there was a man down and they weren’t sure if it was an officer.
During opening statements on Wednesday morning, Wilbourn’s attorney, Juni Ganguli, acknowledged his client had a gun when he shouldn’t have and that Wilbourn shot Bolton. The question is “why,” Ganguli said. Wilbourn, he said, didn’t know there would be an altercation or that there would be a shooting.
The” bottom line” is that Wilbourn did not intend to kill officer Bolton, Ganguli said.
Also during opening statements, Ganguli attempted to reference Darrius Stewart, who was unarmed when he was killed on July 17, 2015, by now-former Memphis police officer Conner Schilling less than a month earlier.
Prosecutors objected, and the jury was ordered by Criminal Court Judge Lee Coffee to disregard Ganguli’s statement.
And before the jury entered the courtroom, Wilbourn told Coffee that he planned to testify.
During her opening statements, Dwyer walked the jury through Bolton’s final minutes before he discovered and approached the illegally parked car.
She played for the jury audio from the MPD dispatchers looking for “364 Delta,” Bolton’s number and shift.
Dwyer told the jury that Wilbourn fired once, paused and fired again 10 times. Bolton, according to the autopsy report, was hit eight times.
After the shooting, neighbors were unable to get through to 911, she said.
So Lanier crawled to Bolton’s body, pressed the button on his radio and begged for help.
“Hurry up, he’s bleeding bad, man. Please, please hurry up,” Lanier said on the recording.
As officers arrived on the scene they were unaware of Bolton’s multiple injuries as they tried to hold his wounded face together, Dwyer said.
She played recordings of their pleas for the Memphis Fire Department and their request that the hospital be notified that an officer had been shot.
And, Dwyer told the jury how Wilbourn fled the scene, carjacked another man because he’d just shot a police officer.
Wilbourn pleaded guilty in April 2017 to a carjacking on the same day as the officer’s shooting. He pleaded guilty to taking a 2002 Honda Accord, brandishing a gun during the carjacking and being a felon in possession of 9mm ammunition.
Dispatchers received an alert about the carjacking after Bolton was shot.
The first prosecution witness to testify was Josh Wilcoxson, a friend and fellow U.S. Marine who served with Bolton in Iraq.
Wilcoxson lives in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and said whenever he heard about an officer-involved shooting in Memphis, he’d check in with his friend who would always text him back.
On Aug. 1, he saw the news and tried to reach Bolton.
“I didn’t get a response that night,” Wilcoxson said.