Lila Statom of Chattanooga“There are twenty people who saw your child murdered. They are sickening, sickening people.”- Judge Lila Statom
A crowd gathers inside and outside the courtroom Monday to watch the witness on the stand.
The judge warns onlookers. Make no noises. Don’t wave your hands. She tells the defendants not to look at the crowd.
“You may not like what you hear,” says Lila Statom, the judge in the Hamilton County General Sessions Court. “Tell the ground that you don’t like it, but don’t look out.”
Christopher Penn, 21, and Antonio Evans, 19, both members of the Bloods street gang, face charges of first-degree murder. In January the two were arrested after one woman among a crowd of onlookers told police she saw the two shoot 23-year-old Terry Parker to death on Grove Street. Parker was in the rival Crips gang.