MARIETTA, Ga. — The judge ruled that the jury would hear testimony that De’Marquis Elkins shot and killed Sherry West’s infant baby in broad daylight on March 21, 2013 and shot the mother in the leg in a botched robbery attempt in Brunswick, Ga.
Glynn County Superior Court Judge Stephen Kelley rejected defense attorneys Kevin Gough’s and Jonathan Lockwood’s motion to throw out the testimony of star witness Dominique Lang, the 15-year-old boy who was with Elkins, 18, when Elkins made the alleged decision to “rob” someone. They soon happened upon West as she was pushing the stroller to her home from the post office.
The jury was ordered out of the courtroom when Lang, shackled and outfitted in prison fatigues, was escorted into the courtroom. He told Glynn County District Attorney Jackie Johnson that he and Elkins were casual friends when they met up an hour before the shooting. He said he and Elkins were walking up Ellis Street toward his grandmother’s house when Elkins spotted Ms.West and quickly moved in.
“He asked her for her purse,” Lang said. “He kept asking for her purse. She kept refusing.”
Lang said that, in rapid succession, Elkins removed his small-caliber pistol from his pocket and hit West in the head with the gun, then again demanded her purse and threatened to shoot her infant baby. Lang said Elkins then fired a shot into the ground that ricocheted and hit West in the leg.
Lang said he took no part in the robbery but did nothing to prevent it either.
“I didn’t shoot no baby,” he mumbled before the court, as he did with most of his answers.
He told the judge and attorneys that he stood there frozen with fear because West began wailing for help. After repeated threats to shoot the baby, Elkins “walked around the stroller, and she walked around the other side, and he shot,” the baby between the eyes, mortally wounding the infant, Lang said.
Testimony Tuesday showed that West was struck once in the leg and once on her left ear. The baby died instantly from a single pistol round between his eyebrows, a stated by the medical examiner.
Lang then testified that they ran scared to his grandmother’s house not too far away with Elkins close behind. Elkins used the Lang’s house phone in to call for a ride out of the neighborhood.
Defense attorney Jonathan Lockwood asked Judge Kelley to throw out the testimony and prevent the jury from hearing it because of inconsistencies he pointed out in Lang’s story on Wednesday versus what he told police on March 22, the day after baby Antonio Santiago’s murder. Lang and his attorney requested, and were granted, a separate trial from Elkins. His trial will take place in his hometown of Glynn County, Ga. instead of suburban Atlanta where the Elkins trial is currently taking place.
Kelley ruled that despite the fact that Lang may have been led by investigators to finger Elkins in the murder and shooting of the baby and Sherry West, respectively, Lang was too important since he was the only eyewitness to the alleged crime to throw out his testimony.
The jury is scheduled to hear Lang’s testimony against his former friend Elkins on Thursday, Aug. 22 in Cobb County Superior Court in Marietta, Ga.
