Skyy Raven Mims enters the courtroom Tuesday at the Whitfield County Courthouse.DALTON, Ga. -- As a woman stood over Dahyabhai Chaudhari, pressing her hands on his mouth and nose, apparently trying to suppress his last breaths, three of his convenience store customers waited for him out front.
Security footage played in Whitfield County Superior Court on Tuesday showed the killer chase Chaudhari into a back room of the Kanku's Express on Airport Road while the store was otherwise empty the night of March 9, 2014. Twenty minutes later, after the killer beat Chaudhari, stabbed him and stretched duct tape across his face, a family arrived at the store.
Adam Emberson wanted a cigar. When nobody came to take his money, the security camera footage shows, he shrugged, slapped change on the counter and smoked outside. His wife, Shannon Emberson, also grew impatient, pounding the counter.
Neither knew Chaudhari lay dying 30 feet from them in a pool of blood on the other side of a door with an "Employees Only" sign.
Eventually, Adam Emberson testified Tuesday, a woman wearing a white hoodie and sunglasses emerged. He said she yelled at him in a "Middle Eastern accent."
"You need to leave," she told Emberson, according to his testimony. "You need to go now. Get your cigarettes and go!"
Conasauga Judicial Circuit District Attorney Bert Poston said that woman is Skyy Raven Marie Mims, on trial here facing charges of murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery, burglary, possession of a weapon while committing a crime and bringing stolen property into the state.
Poston said Mims, 22, killed Chaudhari for about $200 and about 80 scratch-off lottery tickets. Weeks earlier, she had moved from Detroit to Georgia, hoping to make connections with entertainers in Atlanta. She wanted to be a rapper, dancer, fashion designer and model.
When investigators found Chaudhari's body last year, Poston told the jury during his opening statement Monday, they also found Mims' phone in the room. After arresting her two days later, they found a stack of lottery tickets, gloves with Chaudhari's and Mims' DNA, and a fillet knife stained with the victim's blood.
Skyy MimsOn Tuesday, Poston showed the jury footage of Chaudhari's death. Around 11:15 that night, he began walking back to his room in the back of the store when he saw the killer sprinting at him with a pellet gun and a knife. He tried to close the door, but the killer pushed it open, punched him three times and stabbed him in the side.
Mims' attorney, Carla Marable, hopes to convince the jury that the killer on tape is not her client. She said it's another woman from Detroit who happened to be in Dalton, Ga., that night, a woman who could almost be Mims' twin.
On Tuesday, Marable tried to point out bits of the security footage that could create reasonable doubt for the jury.
People who had been in the store earlier that night later told police they saw the killer. But, Marable said, none of those people could identify the person on tape as Mims. The hoodie and the sunglasses concealed the top half of the killer's face.
Marable also said the footage does not show the tattoo of a heart and a peace sign that is near Mims' left breast. Whitfield County Sheriff's Office Detective Chris Guay testified that something that small would not show up on the security camera.
Marable said the killer is also shorter than Mims, who is about 6 feet, 2 inches tall. In the footage, the killer appears about 2 inches taller than an "Employees Only" sign.
But Guay said the cameras do not definitively show the killer's height. The cameras are shooting at a downward angle from the ceiling. And the killer is constantly moving, making the image "fluid."
For his second-to-last witness Tuesday, Poston called Stanley Dyer, who stopped for fuel at the gas station about 40 minutes before Chaudhari died. Though the security camera shows the killer's head masked by a hood, Dyer said the killer sat outside the station while he filled his tank.
He said she had a dyed-orange Afro, like the one Mims sported two days later when police arrested her.
"You just never see that kind of hair on a black person," Dyer testified Tuesday.
Poston played one other security camera clip Tuesday, this one from the Kangaroo Express across from Chaudhari's store. About two hours before the killing, this footage shows a woman trying to make a purchase.
She wore a white hoodie, like the killer. She also sported an orange Afro. She gave the clerk her debit card and asked for an 8-ounce Red Bull and $5 worth of gas.
Her account was $2.24 short.
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at tjett@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6476.