Court closely examines Barnes evidence

PRINCETON — Lorenzo Christopher Barnes missed a meeting with his probation officer and sent detectives to his Old Athens Road apartment complex on Feb. 3, 2012. There, investigators found the clothes and gun holster they say he wore when he shot Jason Hicks to death on North Wickham Avenue Feb. 2.

With Barnes’ first-degree murder, robbery and conspiracy trial less than a month away, representatives for the state and defense met Wednesday for an evidentiary hearing before Circuit Judge Omar Aboulhosn. The evidence presented highlighted the differences in the two sides’ stories.

Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Kelli Harshbarger called Princeton Police Sgt. D.B. Whited to the stand first.

Whited, who served as the lead investigator in the Jason Hicks homicide, previously testified that he found the 30-year-old victim lying in a pool of blood and surrounded by shattered glass near the parking lot of the Pentecost Chapel of Praise on North Wickham Avenue. A young couple attending Thursday-night services discovered Hicks’ lifeless body and notified authorities.

The officer said during a preliminary hearing that Hicks’ legs were partially curled under his body and that he appeared to have been partially run over with a vehicle. The fatal wound, however, was a gunshot wound to the neck from a .45-caliber firearm.

Wednesday, he testified that the bullet was recovered from Hicks’ body during an autopsy.

According to Hicks’ phone records, the last phone call he received came from Barnes, at approximately 7:13 p.m. Mercer County 911 paged officers to the grisly North Wickham scene at 7:33 p.m.

Not long into the investigation, Whited said attention focused on Barnes, 23, as a suspect. Knowing that he was on probation, officers contacted Probation Officer Christa Ellison, asking her to see if Barnes would respond to her requests for a meeting.

“He stated he was on his way,” Whited said, relaying the information Ellison provided after speaking with Barnes. “But, he never showed up.”

Ellison took the stand, confirming Whited’s report and advising the court that she called Barnes at approximately 3:15 to 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 3. She reportedly told him she needed to see him to discuss probation matters or possibly to take a drug test.

“He said he would be right in,” Ellison said.

When the Mercer County Courthouse closed at 4:30 p.m., Ellison said Barnes still had not shown up.

Defense counsel Ward Morgan and Harold Wolfe III indicated they believed Barnes had attempted to contact Ellison to inform her he could not make it to her office that day. Toward that point, they presented phone records that allegedly came from Barnes’ phone, listing six attempted calls to the main outgoing phone line at the Mercer County Courthouse. As even Aboulhosn pointed out, however, no calls are allowed to come into the courthouse on that line.

“The court’s going to take notice that is not a working phone number,” Aboulhosn advised the state and the defense.

Morgan persisted in asking Ellison if the phone records showed Barnes had attempted to reach her, even though he did not make it to Princeton for the meeting she requested.

“He made a number of calls to that line, but that would not be a way to reach me,” Ellison said.

The issue was key, because Harshbarger argued Barnes’ failure to appear before his probation officer signaled he knew he was under investigation for Hicks’ murder and that he was attempting to flee from the investigation. She told the court that the state acquired a receipt showing that Barnes was actually checked in at the Microtel in Beckley at the time that Ellison contacted him.

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When it became obvious Barnes was not going to turn up for the meeting, Princeton Police officers directed their attention to the Old Athens Road apartment complex where Barnes lived.

There, they located a white garbage bag buried in a dumpster and carrying the clothes, holster and ammunition officers think Barnes used to kill Hicks.

The bag contained a gray-and-white-striped hoodie and a pair of gray sweatpants, both of which smelled as if they had been bleached, according to Whited. The bag also concealed a .45-caliber gun holster and a box of .45-caliber ammunition — like that the medical examiner pulled out of Hicks.

Neighbors soon identified the clothing and the holster as Barnes’ belongings. Neighbor Todd Williams even told Whited he had seen Barnes wearing that set of clothing the day Hicks was shot and killed.

People who lived nearby were also acquainted with Barnes’ firearms, according to the officer.

“Mr. Barnes had a history of showing people his gun,” Whited said.

Williams, who was later called to testify Wednesday, told the court that he had seen Barnes with a .45-caliber firearm.

“I had it in my hands looking at it,” Williams said.

He told the court Barnes’ firearm he saw was a black-and-stainless steel Ruger handgun. Wolfe countered, however, that the alleged murder weapon is a blue Taurus .45-caliber firearm. Therefore, he argued that Williams’ testimony that he saw Barnes with a two-toned handgun showed no relationship to the case at hand.

“What we have in this case is extremely strong circumstantial evidence,” Harshbarger said, reminding the court that some individual pieces of evidence must be considered alongside other pieces of evidence to be understood correctly.

She also reminded the court that Barnes allegedly missed his probation appointment because he had taken the car he drove the night of Feb. 2 to Beckley to have it crushed as scrap metal. Therefore, she argued that his inability to arrive in Princeton for that meeting with his probation officer, along with the hotel receipt should stand as evidence of flight.

Aboulhosn advised that he would take both sides’ arguments under advisement and issue a written ruling on whether the testimony of the probation officer and the neighbor will be allowed during trial in late February.

— Contact Tammie Toler at ttoler@ptonline.net.

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Court closely examines Barnes evidence

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