Norwalk murder case goes to jury to decide man’s fate

STAMFORD — A jury will decide the fate of a Bridgeport man accused of fatally shooting a 20-yearold Norwalk man in 2012, after the lawyers on either side of the case made their closing arguments Tuesday afternoon.

Attorneys representing the state and the defendant, 26-year-old Hakeem Atkinson, both emphasized the witness testimony — though for different reasons — shared throughout the first seven days of the murder trial.

John Gulash, who represents Atkinson, asked jurors to note the “consistent inconsistencies” of some of the state's “key” witnesses, namely Atkinson's ex-girlfriend Kira Jordan, who testified a day earlier that she had overheard Atkinson take credit for fatally shooting Joseph Bateman in 2012.

Gulash honed in on Jordan's testimony on Monday, during which she appeared nervous and, by her own admission, had trouble recalling the circumstances in which she had overheard that conversation. He also pointed out that Jordan shared this information with police in 2016, but not during a 2012 interview with detectives.

During his closing argument, Gulash concluded that jurors “cannot rely on her recollection.”

“She made clear to you that it was unclear to her as to whether or not what she said in that statement was accurate or not, in that she couldn't discern if it was what she heard from other people and rumors that she heard versus having heard it from his conversation with somebody, at some time, somewhere that she doesn't remember the details to,” Gulash said in his argument.

But, as Senior Assistant State's Attorney David Applegate later pointed out, Jordan stood by her statement to police during Monday's testimony. He asked jurors to “take a step back” when analyzing Jordan's testimony and consider her perspective.

“This is a 26-year-old woman, she dated the defendant for two years when she was young. He felt comfortable enough around her to have a conversation like this about killing someone. Imagine the internal strife this would cause anyone. On the one hand wanting to cooperate on such a serious matter, on the other hand providing this kind of information has to feel like a betrayal of someone you were so close to. Someone with whom you spent two years of your life,” Applegate said.

Gulash also took aim at the Norwalk Police Department's investigation into the then-cold case in 2016. Calling the investigation “desperate,” Gulash claims investigators revisited witnesses like Jordan and Johan Gallo, one of three people to identify Atkinson as the potential shooter, and in doing so relied upon four-year-old memories to cobble together a case.

“Cheese and wine get better with age — do identifications? Do memories? Do cases?” asked Gulash.

In his response, Applegate acknowledged the “fickle nature” of witness identifications. But, while he conceded that many of the witness' memories differed in details, most agreed on the bigger picture, that Atkinson was the shooter.

“The state's argument isn't to look at things in a vacuum. It's the opposite, to look at all of the evidence together and see how all the pieces fit together,” Applegate said. “The only conclusion that can be drawn from this evidence is that it was defendant's specific intent to commit murder.”

Gulash also took aim at another of the state's witnesses, Kenneth Huckabee, who was an early suspect in the homicide.

Huckabee was in the area of the Avalon Norwalk apartment buildings, now known as The Confluence at Norwalk, on Feb. 3, 2012, at the time Bateman was shot and killed. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, family members highlighted Huckabee as a possible shooter in the case, though Norwalk detectives later ruled him out as a suspect.

According to phone records obtained by police, Huckabee was making a marijuana sale in the McDonald's parking lot located in the Avalon parking garage at the time of the shooting.

Huckabee and Bateman, longtime friends, had also been in “a beef ” around the time of the shooting, a dispute that led to Bateman threatening to “shoot up” Huckabee's home, Gulash pointed out. However, Huckabee claimed during his testimony that he and Bateman had squashed their dispute days before his longtime friend was killed.

Gulash highlighted how Huckabee was wearing clothes that fit the initial descriptions of the shooter and, by his own admission, came and left the area in a car that also matched the description of the shooter's possible escape vehicle.

Applegate later struck back at Gulash's theory, stating that based on Huckabee's believed location at the time of the shooting and the ballistic evidence that it was highly unlikely that Huckabee was the shooter in the case.

After closing arguments, the jury convened to deliberate on their decision. Jury deliberations are scheduled to continue on Wednesday.

If convicted of murder, Atkinson faces a minimum of 25 years in prison, plus an extra five years for a firearms sentence enhancement, which the state is seeking in the case.