Fayette Mall murder was caught on video. Judge refuses to lower accused teen’s bond.
The Fayette Mall shooting that killed a 17-year-old and left two others injured was caught on mall surveillance video, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
The teenager charged with murder and assault in the shooting, 19-year-old Xavier Hardin, waived his case to a grand jury, which will review the charges to determine if the case advances. Judge Lindsay Thurston denied Hardin’s request for a reduction to his $560,000 bond.
Braxton Crenshaw, Hardin’s attorney, argued that the bond was too high for Hardin’s family to pay. Hardin’s mother was on the courtroom Zoom call, and Crenshaw said she could attest to the issues the family had paying the bond. But the mother did not speak during the hearing.
“It’s totally impossible for them to post the current bond,” Crenshaw said.
Thurston reminded Crenshaw that she was the judge who originally set the bond, and she said Hardin was too much of a public threat to lower it.
Hardin was arrested Aug. 24 by Lexington police. The shooting the day before killed 17-year-old Kenneth Bottoms and injured two others, a 17-year-old and a 41-year-old. The two injured were bystanders who didn’t know Bottoms or Hardin, police said. Police said it’s likely that Hardin and Bottoms knew each other, and a verbal altercation occurred before the gunfire. It wasn’t a random event, Police Chief Lawrence Weathers said previously.
When the gunfire occurred, about 160 officers responded to the mall, Weathers said.
Hardin was arrested one day after the shooting because witnesses cooperated with police in a timely manner, Weathers said. Such cooperation has been rare, he said. Lexington has had 25 homicides this year, and nine of the investigations are still open cases, according to police data.
The shooting happened near one of the Bath & Body Works stores in the mall, police said. The mall closed for the remainder of the day when the shooting happened, but it reopened the following day.
Social media posts from others charged in connection to the shooting indicated that Bottoms also knew Mykel Waide, a teenager who was shot and killed one week prior. Police have said multiple times that those involved in the shootings may have known each other, but investigators hadn’t yet found a direct link between the two homicides.
Two other teenagers have been charged in connection to the shooting, according to court records. Cion Townsend and Nasir Lyons, both 18, were charged with evidence tampering after police said they were seen taking evidence from Bottoms’ body, police said. The two were “associated with” Bottoms, police said at the time.
Lyons was held on a $25,000 bond due to a violation of a previous release. Townsend was released on his own recognizance, according to the Lexington-Fayette County Detention Center.
This story was originally published September 1, 2020 at 10:42 AM.