Defendant's car use at question in murder trial

photo Kaylon Bailey sits in Judge Rebecca Stern's courtroom Tuesday during jury selection for his second murder trial. The first trial ended in a mistrial when a juror did prohibited online research.

A Chattanooga police detective talking about seized cellphone records and a TBI investigator explaining fingerprint analysis were among several evidence witnesses in the second day of Kaylon Bailey's retrial on murder charges.

A Chattanooga technician detailed to jurors how cellphone towers ping as a phone travels through an area. An investigator spun a digital 3D scan of the crime scene to show nearly every angle of the Jan. 13, 2012, shooting.

But a borrowed car raised questions for jurors as to where Bailey was when Kima Evans, 35, was shot five times with .223-caliber bullets in the driveway of his mother's home at 1706 Cambridge Drive. Evans was seated in a car when someone fired 10 times, striking him five times. He lapsed into a coma soon after and died Jan. 29, 2012.

Shemika Ricks testified late Wednesday that she let Bailey, 36, borrow her car the day of the shooting. But after he picked her up from school at Chattanooga State Community College and dropped her off, she didn't see the car until the next morning.

Prosecutor Bates Bryan asked why she called police about her missing car.

"Because I wanted my car back and didn't have my car back," Ricks said.

The shooting took place shortly before 7:30 p.m. Testimony was entered showing that Bailey's cellphone rang unanswered 13 times between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. that day. The pings from cell towers indicated that Bailey was in the same area of town as Cambridge Drive.

This is Bailey's second trial in Evans' death. A mistrial was declared in June when a juror admitted to having researched Bailey's criminal history online.

Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Rebecca Stern has sequestered this jury at a local hotel.

In the first trial prosecutors relied on a "dying declaration" by Evans in which he said "Kaylon" in the background of a 911 call. There were no eyewitnesses to the shooting.

Prosecutors did not explain a motive in the first trial. Defense attorney Mike Acuff has challenged that there is no DNA evidence linking his client to the crime scene.

Contact staff writer Todd South at tsouth@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347. Follow him on Twitter @tsouthCTFP.

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