A 20-year-old wanted to kill someone when he fired five times into a crowd of people at a gas station on Wilcox Boulevard, prosecutors say.
He succeeded and Jonathan Lawrence, a 42-year-old innocent bystander pumping gas, ended up dead, prosecutors told a Hamilton County Criminal Court jury on Tuesday.
Montez Davis, right, is on trial for the fatal shooting of a man who was pumping gas at the Kanku’s on Wilcox Boulevard early last year. He and his attorney, Curtis Bowe, left, listen during jury selection Tuesday.Montez Davis had no intention of killing Lawrence and had reacted to continued harassment and intimidation by people in the parking lot, his attorney, Curtis L. Bowe III, told the jury.
On Tuesday, the first day of his trial, Davis pleaded not guilty to the three charges against him – first-degree murder, reckless endangerment and unlawful weapons possession.
The maximum prison term is life in prison for murder and up to six years for each of the other two charges. The trial resumes this morning.