A 37-year-old Chattanooga man has been acquitted of reckless aggravated assault in a 2015 shooting.
A jury took only about 90 minutes on Thursday to find Shanon Frank Ketchersid not guilty of shooting Marcus Keith during a fight with a third man in his Tyner-area home.
Ketchersid told prosecutors he was having a get- together on April 3, 2015, with his girlfriend, Ashley Parsons, and longtime acquaintances Zachary Hamblin and Keith.
Hamblin became agitated after Keith started teasing him about the quality of some marijuana he’d picked up that evening, Ketchersid said Thursday.
When Hamblin started to get physical, Ketchersid said, he walked his friend outside. But when he wouldn’t let Hamblin back inside, Hamblin knocked him unconscious, Ketchersid said.
In shock over everything escalating, Ketchersid said, he asked Parsons and Keith to get Hamblin away from his home. About seven minutes after he supposedly left, though, Hamblin returned and began to bang on the front door.
Ketchersid knew Hamblin kept a firearm in his car, so he grabbed his own off the island in the kitchen.
“Why’d you grab that?” Assistant District Attorney Leslie Longshore asked.
“I’m going to protect myself and everybody in my home,” Ketchersid replied.
The ensuing chaos at the door left Keith with serious bowel and leg injuries when he stepped in the middle and tried to grab the gun out of Ketchersid’s hands, prosecutors said.
“Those [injuries] are caused by the reckless actions of the defendant. They are caused by him picking up that gun,” Assistant District Attorney Jason Demastus told jurors during closing arguments.
Hamblin drove away and ran into police when he almost struck one of their cruisers. He had “obvious injuries” and told investigators Ketchersid struck him multiple times, police said.
A grand jury indicted Ketchersid on charges of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and tampering with evidence in June 2015. Prosecutors dismissed the last two charges days before Ketchersid’s trial started Tuesday and amended the assault to reckless aggravated assault, court records show.
For proof, the prosecutors called the other partygoers to the stand and played the 911 call Parsons made around midnight.
“There’s been an accidental shooting,” Parson says on the call. “He’s in the Navy and we were looking at the gun and it accidentally went off.”
Demastus stopped the tape right there.
“Did [Keith] shoot himself?” he asked. “No. Nothing about Zachary Hamblin either, none. The defense has already started. The truth has already not been told.”
Police said Ketchersid took a shower after the shooting to wash off the blood. Investigators later found his bloody clothes under a bed.
But defense attorney Ben McGowan said Chattanooga police investigators immediately formed an idea about what happened and dismissed any evidence that didn’t match their bias.
McGowan said Parsons and Hamblin told different stories about what happened that night, but Hamblin’s initial interview was lost.
“What I question is why that statement from Hamblin, who is one of the least compelling or credible witnesses, isn’t around,” the defense attorney said. “Do we have notes from [the] detective? No. What we have is a supplemental report three months after this interview in which [the detective] says what Zach Hamblin said. He believes Hamblin is the victim here. And that he was assaulted. But we have something better: Two accounts that can’t be reconciled.”
Contact staff writer Zack Peterson at zpeterson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347. Follow him on Twitter @zackpeterson918.