The victim in a May 2016 attempted murder-by-shotgun trial testified Wednesday, September 26, 2018, about the shooting that cost her her left arm and left her scarred for life.
The eight-man, four-woman jury sat rapt and silent as Miriam Tamica Harley related the events of May 22, 2016, a Sunday that started normally and peacefully and ended in horror as she bled out from five shotgun wounds and was rushed to University Health for life-saving treatment and the start of a long road to healing.
“I couldn’t breathe,” she said calmly after she was sworn in. “I was crawling, trying to get under the house.” That was in answer to questions from Assistant District Attorney Pamela Moser, who led Harley through testimony that began with her mother going to morning church and her two young sons playing outside, just before former boyfriend Steven Killingsworth arrived to seek a reconciliation. That morning confrontation led to Harley taking her sons to a local bookstore and bowling with cousins before returning home, where the near-fatal events began.
Harley related she had just returned home, sent her children into their house and was outside in her car wondering whether to go to a motel for the night when she saw her former boyfriend Killingsworth drive up and exit his vehicle with a shotgun. She tried to speed away in her car, she said, but ended up crashing it and watched as he approached. She was shot as she fled the vehicle and remember the last thing she saw was him raising the shotgun to her head.
Her testimony, which lasted just under a half-hour, ended dramatically as she stood to show the jury her wounds, which included her amputated left arm, a healed but gaping injury to her left shoulder and wounds in her left flank, side and chest.
Killingsworth, now facing attempted second-degree murder charges that could send him to prison for no less than 10 years and as many as 50, is serving as his own attorney in proceedings that began Monday with jury selection in Caddo District Judge John D. Mosely Jr.’s courtroom. The jury was seated Wednesday and testimony began with Harley’s mother and sons testifying about the events of that day. Killingsworth, assisted by Michelle Andrepont of the Caddo Parish Public Defenders Office, questioned Harley’s mother and 14-year-old elder son. But but did not have questions for his alleged victim, her younger 12-year-old son, the emergency room doctor who treated her or the Shreveport Police area supervisor who was first on the scene of the shooting in the 6700 block of Liberty Street, in the city’s Cedar Grove neighborhood.
Moser and fellow ADA Ron Christopher Stamps will introduce expert, fire EMS, police and forensic witnesses when proceedings resume at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, September 27, 2018, in Judge Mosely’s courtroom at Caddo District Court.
If convicted as charged, Killingsworth, 50, faces a possible prison sentence of not less than 10 years and up to 50 years without benefit of parole, probation or suspension of sentence.