Jaymonie Wallace
By Greg Glassner/CP Editor
A 20-year-old Lake Land’Or resident was convicted last Thursday of three charges stemming from a gang-related shooting and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
A Caroline Circuit Court jury found Jaymonie Marcell Wallace guilty of aggravated malicious wounding, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and of criminal gang participation.
The jury of four men and eight women deliberated for about 90 minutes before returning the guilty verdict on the three charges while finding Wallace not guilty of attempted murder. The jury also returned a not-guilty verdict on two other firearms charges and of attempted malicious wounding of another man in a drive-by shooting last year.
Wallace was a leader of one of three Caroline County youth gangs, the YG4s from Dawn. The victim of the Sept. 25, 2014 shooting, McCartha “MJ” Stevens, 20, was the acknowledged leader of a rival gang, the Mob 30, which is based in Bowling Green.
According to sworn testimony from Caroline Sheriff’s Department Sgt. M.M. “Mac” Ellett, who interrogated Wallace after he surrendered himself to authorities the day after the incident, as well as from Stevens and other witnesses, Wallace went looking for Stevens on the day of the shooting to right some wrongs between the two men and their gangs.
Whether Wallace intended to shoot and kill Stevens or simply intimidate him with a gun when he and several other gang members pulled up in front of the Braswell Street home of Stevens’ grandmother, was left to the jury to decide.
Stevens said he had gone to the store and was walking back up his grandmother’s driveway carrying two Pepsis and a Honeybun in a bag when Wallace pulled up in a car with several other gang members. Wallace and his half-brother Andre Holland, jumped out of the car.
Stevens said Wallace and his cohorts hailed him and asked him to approach the car because they did not want to hash out their differences in his grandmother’s yard. Wallace’s brother then punched Stevens and when Stevens dropped his bag of store merchandise to defend himself, Wallace shot him three times, Stevens said.
Savante Carey, the owner of the car Wallace was driving, testified that they went to Bowling Green to “find some opps,” meaning Mob 30s, the rival gang to the YG4s. Carey said that when Wallace and his brother jumped back in the car and they drove away, Wallace exclaimed, “I hope the fat [expletive deleted] dies!”
Several of the witnesses, including Carey and Stevens himself, were escorted to the witness stand in handcuffs and clad in prison garb, because they also face, or have already been convicted of multiple gang-related offenses.
Wallace, who sported long dreadlocks when arrested, appeared at the defense table with neatly trimmed hair, wearing pressed slacks, a tie and a dress shirt. This contrast was not lost on the jurors, or on Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Diane Abato and defense lawyer Tameka N. Casey.
“What you will hear today is a hodgepodge … of self-serving testimony. Jaymonie Wallace is a victim,” Carey said in her opening statement.
“Everything about his [Wallace’s] conduct was that he was there to talk. The intent to kill was not there,” Carey said in her closing argument.
Abato sharply disagreed. “They acted as a mob,” she said. “He went there to kill McCartha Stevens. “The fact that [Stevens] was doing wrong does not mean he needs to be shot down like a dog in front of his grandmother’s house. It’s not OK to handle this stuff on the streets,” Abato said.
Several ironies and related events were brought out during the two-day trial.
Stevens testified that he and his assailant, Wallace, were once “best friends,” and “used to hang out all the time.”
The difficulties between them started, according to Carey, when Stevens tried to aggressively recruit Wallace for the Mob 30 gang. Wallace resisted this and subsequently fell in with the rival YG4s.
Witnesses at the trial implicated Wallace in a shooting in August, 2014 at a party on Cedon Road where there one man was shot in the buttocks, and another shooting in September on Sarah Street, near Braswell Street, in which Mob 30 member Aaron “Chopz” Taylor was the intended target but the shot missed.
At the trial, three Caroline High School teachers testified about an incident last year where Wallace and others roared up into the school parking lot and Wallace stripped off his shirt and challenged to a fight a member of the football team said to be affiliated with the Mob 30 gang. Football coaches broke up the challenge and were able to defuse that altercation.
Abato deftly cited these incidents as indicative of a gang mentality and the sort of criminal activity and intimidation that fits the legal definition of a street gang.
Another facet of Caroline’s gangs that entered into the picture is the Facebook posting and texting by gang members of taunts and photos calling attention to their gang participation. This included photos of Wallace and others flashing a fistful of currancy and making gang signs with their hands. Abato introduced these photos into evidence.
One of these taunts may have contributed to Wallace’s actions Sept. 25. Stevens teased Wallace about being “a leg shooter,” a barbed reference to him allegedly missing his intended target one time and hitting another in the buttocks.
Wallace didn’t miss Stevens on Sept. 25. One 22-caliber bullet hit him in the hand when he raised it to protect himself and the other two lacerated Stevens’ liver and are still lodged in the big man’s torso more than six months after the shooting.
After the shots were fired, Stevens was able to make it back to his grandmother’s house where he collapsed on the floor bleeding. His grandmother, Barbara Pleasants, called 911, and Deputy Stephanie Brennan found him on the floor in a pool of blood.
Stevens was rushed to the trauma unit of Mary Washington Hospital where he was operated on by Dr. Corey Wright, who testified in last week’s trial about the extent of Stevens’ injuries.
Meanwhile, Wallace and his younger brother had jumped back in Carey’s metallic green Ford Taurus and sped off.
Wallace was nearly apprehended several hours later, when Caroline Sheriff’s Lt. Travis Nutter went to Lake Land’Or and spotted the Taurus approaching the exit gate. Nutter testified that Wallace jumped out and Nutter chased him across Route 639 into the subdivision’s other section, where he lost sight of him.
After his surrender the following day, Ellett questioned Wallace about the incident and Wallace admitted shooting Stevens, Ellett testified.
In Wallace’s rendition of the incident, however, Stevens was the aggressor, Ellett noted, when questioned by Casey on cross-examination.
Ellett is the Sheriff’s Department’s expert on street gangs and has undergone extensive training on the topic. He has been looking into the YG4s, Mob 30s and a third gang for more than two years, he testified.
Because gang members now know that police can easily identify them by wearing “colors,” or gang names on their clothing, they have adopted more subtle ways of communicating their gang affiliations. Hand signs are one such way, Ellett said.
The defense presented as a defense witness Phyllis Wilson, whose son was with Wallace on the day of the shooting and has been convicted of gang-participation offenses.
Wilson said that her son and Wallace have been friends for a long time and she considered them to be members of a social group, not a gang.
“Is a group of friends a gang?” Casey asked the jury.
The jury decided that in this case, it was.
After the verdict, and before the jury went back to recommend a sentence, Casey brought Wallace’s grandfather, Jacob Elijah Broggin to the stand.
“I know how it is to lose a son because I lost my only son in the streets,” Broggin said in reference to Wallace’s father who was murdered 19 years ago in a gang related incident.
“This is my only grandson. I had him since the age of five and this comes as a big shock to me. … If you take him, don’t take him for long, I’d like to have him back.”
Judge Patricia Kelly instructed the jury that the charge of aggravated malicious wounding, carries a sentence of 20 years to life.
The jurors recommended a 25-year sentence.
Abato said after the trial that she was satisfied with the verdict. “They did a great job and paid attention to the evidence,” in what was a complicated chain of events, she noted.