Before anything ever happened, Wendell Washington had a white Camaro. He would park in the driveway at 3687 Northrop St. - where he lived with his mother and girlfriend in Lupton City - or across the street.
And on May 5, 2013, Harley Stokes heard her boyfriend coming home around 10:45 p.m., music blaring from the front seat. She slipped on a bathrobe, and walked to the front door to greet him.
Jeremy Reynolds
"Then I heard a voice," Stokes recalled Tuesday in Hamilton County Criminal Court. One she didn't recognize.
Stokes reached for the door, but Washington, 19, slammed it shut. Stokes heard him holler outside the door, but couldn't make out what he was saying. She saw his 6-foot-2-inch frame disappear from window view. Then one or two gunshots boomed in the night.
"And a bunch followed after."
Stokes said she opened the door and saw Washington lying on the front porch, his eyes open, his head shaking, gasping as he tried to collect his final breaths. She ran inside, called 911, grabbed a pillow. She propped it under Washington's head while a neighbor administered CPR. She and his mother and the neighbor waited as police and paramedics arrived. But the only answer that arrived was the worst: Washington died from seven gunshots to his back, arms and chest.
Police ultimately arrested and charged Jeremy Reynolds, 30, whose first-degree murder trial began Tuesday in Judge Barry Steelman's courtroom. Reynolds, who served four years in prison after a facilitation of second-degree murder conviction in 2008, stood beside his attorneys John McDougal and Chris Dixson in a crisp, white-collared shirt Tuesday. After a prosecutor finished reading his indictment to the court, he pleaded not guilty to murder and possession of a firearm with a violent felony conviction.
"Preparation," prosecutor Kevin Brown told jurors during opening arguments. "This case is about Jeremy Reynolds being prepared for a confrontation with Wendell Washington. Prepared for a confrontation that left Wendell Washington dead on his front porch, riddled with gunshots."
Using several eyewitnesses and 911 calls, prosecutors constructed a timeline of events that May evening. During the firefight on the porch, one bullet struck Reynolds in the side, Brown said. Meanwhile, a short distance from Washington's home, a neighbor was letting his dog out in the back yard.
"Then he hears these same gunshots," Brown said. "He goes inside and looks outside a small window in the kitchen. He sees a white SUV fly down [the] street, run a stop sign and go up a hill."
That same SUV, Brown said, arrived at Erlanger hospital's emergency room at 11:03 p.m. Two men jumped out of the car and carried a third man into the lobby. They laid him on a gurney then bolted, Brown said.
"The man they dropped off is Jeremy Reynolds," he said. Some of the other men, he added, were his fellow Gangster Disciples.
A firearms examiner determined Reynolds was struck by a .40-caliber bullet, Brown said. "And that .40-caliber bullet is the same caliber as the gun Mr. Washington had on his front porch."
Brown said shell casings recovered from the front porch were .45-caliber. But investigators never recovered a .45-caliber gun that night.
They would three months later, on a different man during a traffic stop, attorney McDougal said. And that was precisely his point. He spent most of Tuesday countering the state's theory, asking witnesses whether they ever saw the shooter, or how they could place Reynolds at the scene.
At one point on the stand, Stokes said, "there was nobody with [Washington]," when he came home.
"How do you know?" McDougal fired back.
He told jurors the state was making an incredible amount of assumptions.
"Remember, they have to prove their case," he said. "They will not be able to put the gun in Mr. Reynolds' hand. They will not be able to put Mr. Reynolds there. They don't know who was there. They don't know who it was. They don't know if it was a gang or not. All they know is Mr. Washington was shot."
Why Reynolds then?
"Well," McDougal said, "he was shot at the same time."
The trial continues today in Judge Steelman's courtroom at 9:30 a.m.
Contact staff writer Zack Peterson at 423-757-6347 or zpeterson@timesfreepress.com with story ideas or tips. Follow @zackpeterson918.