A second gunman charged in the 2014 Lookout Valley triple homicide accepted a plea deal Friday that will send him to prison for 15 years.
Prosecutors have long said Skyler Allen helped his friend Derek Morse shoot and kill three men outside of a trailer home on Kellys Ferry Road on April 9, 2014. They argued Morse was angry one of the victims, Jon Morris, tried to ambush him a few nights earlier over money. Jurors convicted Morse, 23, of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life without parole after a trial in September.
But prosecutors agreed to a reduced sentence for Allen – scheduled to stand trial in April for three counts of first-degree murder charges – because they had a weaker case against him than they did against Morse.
Skyler Allen“Securing a conviction against Mr. Allen would have been much more difficult than it was with Derek Morse,” Melydia Clewell, a spokeswoman for Hamilton County District Attorney General Neal Pinkston, said Monday. “A trial could have reasonably resulted in an acquittal. We discussed it [with family members] and they indicated they understood the enormous risk of trial and were comfortable with a plea to ensure Mr. Allen serves as much time as possible with the proof we had in his case.”
According to trial testimony, a third man, Jacob Allison, drove Morse and Allen to the crime scene, and both men popped out of the car and opened fire on Caleb Boozer, Matthew Callan, John Lang and Morris. State witnesses said Morse chased the men down, shooting and killing them as they tried to escape into the woods or under the trailer home.