Jury acquits man accused of shooting man in the head at a Lexington gas station
A man accused of fatally shooting another man in the back of the head at a Lexington gas station in 2018 was found not guilty Wednesday by a Fayette County jury after defense attorneys argued someone else was responsible.
After days of hearing testimony at trial from detectives, evidence experts and witnesses, the jury acquitted 34-year-old Jermaine Yates of murder, said Lou Anna Red Corn, the commonwealth’s attorney for Fayette County. The jury deliberated for about two hours.
Prosecutors told jurors that Yates fatally shot 31-year-old Kerry D. Kenney at the Shell gas station on Versailles Road at Alexandria Drive in the early morning hours of July 1, 2018. The shooting happened after Yates had gotten into the back seat of a car at the gas station to buy cocaine from Kenney, prosecutors said.
During the drug deal, Yates, who was in the back passenger seat, shot Kenney, prosecutors said. A friend of Kenney’s was in the car at the time of the shooting.
During closing arguments Wednesday, Yates’ attorney, Bonnie Potter, told jurors that Kenney’s friend, not Yates, had killed Kenney. There was no evidence that Yates was the one to shoot Kenney, or that the shooting happened at the Shell station at all, she argued.
Surveillance video at the Shell station showed the white passenger car Kenney and his friend were in, and also showed Yates get into the car. However, the motion-activated cameras did not capture the moment Yates got out of the car and did not capture the “flash” of a gunshot, Potter said.
Kenney’s friend told investigators that after the shooting, he’d gotten out of the front passenger seat of the car and walked around in a panic before pushing Kenney into the floorboard of the passenger seat and driving the car away.
The friend was driving for about 30 minutes before police were called to the corner of North Broadway and Short Street. Responding officers found the friend walking around acting “erratic,” and Kenney’s body in the floorboard of the front passenger seat.
Potter told the jury that when Kenney’s friend drove away from the Shell station, he drove away from any chance Kenney had at getting help. She also said Kenney’s friend was driving away from evidence he left at the gas station in an effort to get away from “what he’d done.”
Assistant commonwealth’s attorney Alex Garcia argued that Yates’ attorneys were using what happened after the shooting to distract the jury from the evidence surrounding the shooting itself. Yates was captured on security footage going into the gas station to get cigarettes before the shooting, and also filmed getting into the car before the shooting occurred, Garcia said.
Yates’ attorney pointed to a lack of physical evidence found at the Shell station as a reason jurors should find Yates not guilty.
There was some delay before investigators were able to learn that the Versailles Road Shell station was the apparent scene of the shooting.
Kenney’s friend, who is not from Lexington, could not tell police where the shooting had happened, only that it was at a Shell station. Prosecutors said his unfamiliarity with Lexington also caused the 30 minute delay between the shooting and police finding Kenney in the vehicle on North Broadway.
During closing arguments Wednesday, prosecutors showed jurors evidence of blood in the back seat of the car, and a smudge on the console that they believe showed someone was in the back seat of the car during the shooting. They argued that person was Yates.
Kenney’s friend told investigators that Yates had gotten into the backseat of the car to buy cocaine that night, asked to sample the product, and then shot Kenney in the back of the head.
Medical examiner Meredith Frame testified during the trial that the trajectory of the bullet that killed Kenney had gone up and to the left from the entry point near the back right side of his head. Prosecutors argued that would be consistent with the shooter having been in the back passenger seat.
Potter argued that the trajectory showed only where the bullet traveled, but not the position or location of Yates’ body at the time it was fired.
All of the evidence and surveillance video in the case lined up with what Kenney’s friend told investigators had happened, Garcia said.
Surveillance footage that appeared to show Kenney’s friend walking behind a dumpster at the Shell station after the shooting, apparently getting rid of something, told a different story, Potter argued. Potter told jurors that while Kenney’s death was tragic, Yates was innocent.
This story was originally published February 26, 2020 at 2:59 PM.
