Columbus murder trial witness recalls friend dying in her arms after shootout

Having heard all the evidence in a weeklong murder trial, a Columbus jury soon will decide the guilt or innocence of the man accused of gunning down his estranged girlfriend’s new beau during a 2:30 a.m. shootout in an apartment bathroom.

Jurors have heard witnesses detail the chaos that ensued Sept. 7, 2021, when Quincy Tyrek Wade entered a Buena Vista Road apartment looking for Channa Powell, who was pregnant with his child, and got into a shootout with Maurice Vaughn Jackson, who was there with her.

Armed with 9-millimeter pistols, the two men each fired eight shots until their guns jammed. Wade afterward fled, shot through the legs. Jackson died on the bathroom floor from a shot through the center of his chest, with Powell screaming and cradling him in her arms.

Besides murder, Wade is charged with aggravated assault for threatening Powell with his gun, and with home invasion for entering the apartment uninvited.

His defense attorneys, law partners William Kendrick and Mark Shelnutt, claim Wade shot Jackson in self-defense, after Jackson shot him first.

Prosecutors Don Kelly and Meghan Bowden maintain Wade cannot stand on a self-defense claim when he by law was the “primary aggressor,” having initiated the confrontation that triggered the shootout.

The prosecution questioned its last witnesses Thursday. The defense called no witnesses, and Wade declined to testify.

Superior Court Judge Bobby Peters scheduled closing arguments for Friday morning, after which jurors will deliberate on a verdict.

Wade faces life in prison if convicted on all the charges.

The evidence

Witnesses testified that Powell broke up with Wade after he questioned whether the child she carried was his, and began spending time with Jackson, with whom she worked.

“We weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend,” she told a detective after the shooting, but acknowledged she and Jackson had become increasingly intimate.

The day before the shooting was Labor Day, when they went to a cookout with Jackson’s family, returning around 12:30 a.m. to a friend’s Patriot Place apartment at 3700 Buena Vista Road, where they were spending the night.

That’s where Wade banged on the door some time after 2 in the morning.

As she and Jackson hid in the bathroom with their host, Wade entered through an unlocked patio glass door, kicked the bathroom door in, and confronted Powell with his gun. The woman who rented the apartment fled as Wade came in.

One point of contention is what happened next, as Wade faced off with Powell, and Jackson hid in the bathtub behind a shower curtain.

In a police interview on Sept. 16, 2021, Powell said of Wade: “He put the gun to my stomach and said, ‘I’ll kill you and the baby.’”

But that detail was not mentioned when detectives first questioned her, and Kendrick argues she added that threat later, after Wade had claimed self-defense during his first court hearing Sept. 10, six days earlier.

Kendrick saw the alleged threat as a way to justify Jackson’s shooting Wade first, as Georgia law allows using deadly force to prevent the commission of a felony.

Powell in court testified that after Wade threatened her, Jackson pulled the shower curtain aside, and the gunfire began. She couldn’t say who shot first. “I just heard the gunshots going off,” she told police.

As Wade left, she followed him, snatching his Smith & Wesson pistol and dropping it on a couch. The pistol’s clip or magazine, with eight bullets still inside, later was found under Jackson’s body on the bathroom floor.

Jackson’s Glock still had three live rounds in it, police said. Each gun had a spent cartridge lodged in the firing chamber.

Powell ran back to the bathroom, using a towel to put pressure on Jackson’s chest wound as she held him in her arms. She said he “took a deep, deep breath and passed away.”

During her interview that morning with Detective Sherman Hayes, she said she had wanted to drive Jackson to the hospital herself, rather than wait on an ambulance, thinking that could have saved him.

“He wouldn’t have made it,” Hayes told her. “You did everything you could do.”

She said she had flashbacks of Jackson dying in her arms every time she closed her eyes. “He was always kind with me,” she told Hayes.

Wade was not, she said: “He threatens me all the time. We fight all the time.”

Kendrick repeatedly has described their relationship as “toxic.” Witnesses have testified that Wade once shot her in the thigh, and she previously stabbed him after he kicked her, during an argument.

The defense has claimed this pattern of conflict shows Wade’s entering someone else’s home to fight with Powell was not out of the ordinary.

The prosecution has countered that regardless of their relationship, Wade had no authority to enter the apartment to hunt Powell down.

Going to LaGrange

Among the trial’s last witnesses Thursday was Xavier Stevenson, who was Wade’s roommate in 2021, sharing an apartment on Ruben Street.

That’s where Wade went in his Dodge Charger after the shooting, waking Stevenson, who testified Wade’s injuries were obvious when he walked in.

“That’s when I seen how bad his wounds were, and I said, ‘You got to go to the hospital,’” he said.

But instead of going to a Columbus emergency room, they drove 45 minutes to LaGrange.

Knowing Wade had left a blood trail from the Patriot Place apartment to his car, police had warned local hospitals to be on the lookout for a gunshot victim.

First LaGrange police came to question Stevenson, who lied, telling them he and Wade had been to Atlanta, where Wade was wounded trying to buy marijuana. He corrected that account later when Columbus police interviewed him.

Kendrick had Stevenson testify that on their drive to LaGrange, Wade told his roommate that Jackson shot him first, and he shot back to defend himself.

The prosecution has said that who shot first doesn’t matter, as Wade was committing a felony from the time he entered the apartment with a gun, and Jackson legally was authorized to shoot to stop him.