DNA testing revealed there was a 99.99 percent chance Delwyn Manuel was the father of his victim’s unborn child.
Delwyn Manuel, 53, of Haines City.
The jury deliberated for about 45 minutes, convicting 53-year-old Manuel on Nov. 1 of sexual battery with familial or custodial authority. He is facing life in prison and will be sentenced Dec. 15.
Assistant State Attorney Will Dennis told jurors that the 15-year-old victim was vomiting and complaining of her stomach hurting. When her mother took her to the hospital, doctors notified her she was six weeks pregnant.
In interviews with law enforcement, the victim said she was abused while being babysat at Manuel’s house after everyone was asleep.
She said the majority of the time Manuel forced himself on her was while she was trying to sleep on the couch. But there was at least one time when she was looking for a DVD and he told her, “We are going to have sex.”
The victim told detectives she was unsure how many times Manuel had sex with her. When FDLE compared fetal tissue from the victim with a DNA sample from Manuel, it was a match.
The defense told jurors that the victim could not remember exactly when the batteries occurred, which meant that she was being untruthful. He said her embarrassment an even bigger indicator that she wasn’t telling the truth.
Assistant State Attorney Will Dennis addresses jurors during closing arguments Nov. 1.
But Dennis told them that the victim genuinely struggled to talk about it because the defendant was someone she used to trust.
“She was excited to be around him,” Dennis said. “That all changed when he started sexually battering her and got her pregnant.”
He reminded jurors of the DNA test and that there was a 99 percent probability Manuel was the parent.
“That makes it very clear the defendant should be found guilty as charged,” he said. “This is a clear case.”
https://www.sao10.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Delwyn-Manuel.jpg600480Kaitlyn Pearsonhttps://www.sao10.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Office-of-the-State-Attorney-10th-Judicial-Circuit-Logo.pngKaitlyn Pearson2017-11-15 13:32:562017-11-16 08:52:48JURY VERDICT: Haines City man sexually battered girl, got her pregnant
Star Tribble shot her sleeping boyfriend in the back of the head and left his body on top of their mattress.
Star Tribble, 36, of Winter Haven.
A jury found Tribble guilty Oct. 31 of first-degree murder, tampering with a witness, tampering with physical evidence, assisted tampering with evidence and false report of a crime. Immediately following her conviction, she was sentenced to life in prison.
Assistant State Attorney Kristie Ducharme told jurors evidence showed that Tribble killed Tomorreio Clark in the early morning hours of Feb. 19, 2016.
Their daughter, Damecia Stephens, came home after her shift ended at midnight, and Clark was alive. Stephens said there was no arguing between her parents and that everything appeared normal.
Stephens went to sleep shortly after getting home and was woken up by a loud boom. Minutes later, Tribble came into her bedroom, telling her to pack bags for herself and her two little brothers so all of them could leave.
Tribble, Stephens and her two little brothers all left their Winter Haven home and checked in to a hotel a few miles away.
On Saturday morning, they pick up Tribble’s friend in Cocoa and drive to the Walton County Correctional Facility in Defuniak Springs.
While stopping at a gas station, Tribble hands Stephens a bag and tells her to throw it away. Stephens later told law enforcement that while she did not look in the bag, she noticed that it was a heavy metal object about 8 inches in length.
Tribble picks up her friend, and they all check into a hotel in Walton County. The two visit their boyfriends in prison and then leave to drop Tribble’s friend off and drive back to Polk County.
They arrive at Tribble’s brother’s house in Lakeland early Sunday morning.
Tribble has her kids unpack the trunk as she tells her brother, Kenneth Stacy, that she needs help moving something. She never told him where they were going, but upon returning to her house, she pointed at the bedroom and told Stacy, “He’s in there.”
Stacy went inside to find Clark’s body and immediately confronted Tribble asking her why she didn’t call the police. She told him the police would have asked too many questions, but that she “shot him in the head” because she was sick of him jumping on her.
She asked Stacy to help her move Clark’s body, but he refused. The two drove back to Stacy’s house that evening and didn’t speak about it again.
The next morning when Stephens was getting ready to leave Stacy’s house to go to class, she told her mother she’d forgotten her book at home. Tribble handed her a key to the house and said, “He’s gone.”
Stephens found her father’s body when she got to the house, and she immediately called 911.
Assistant State Attorney Kristie Ducharme. (FILE PHOTO)
Ducharme told jurors that in Tribble’s first interview with law enforcement, she lied. Tribble also told Stephens and her two younger brothers they had to lie to law enforcement as well.
When Stacy was interviewed, he tried to minimize the situation. He didn’t tell detectives that Tribble asked for his help moving the body or that she confessed what she’d done.
Law enforcement knew their stories weren’t adding up, so they interviewed Stephens and Stacy again. They both came clean and told the entire story.
The defense argued that Stephens’ and Stacy’s testimonies could not be trusted because they lied to law enforcement initially.
Ducharme reminded the jurors that the reason they lied was because Tribble threatened them.
“Yes, they lied at first,” she said. “but there was a reason. They consistently gave the same story after that.”
Ducharme also told the jury that Tribble wrote a letter to Stephens before trial started, asking her to change her story and tell police she’d lied in her second interview and then destroy the letter. Ducharme asked them to combine Stephens’ and Stacy’s statements with all of the evidence, especially the ones showing Tribble was tampering with multiple witnesses, which left no reasonable double that Tribble was the one who killed Clark.
As for why Tribble killed Clark, Stephens said while she had witnessed physical violence between her parents when she was a child, she had not witnessed physical violence between the two leading up to the murder. However, in jail phone calls between Tribble and her boyfriend in the Walton Correctional Institution their conversations allude to them having discussed killing Clark in the past.
Tribble’s coworkers said he was getting out of prison a month later, and Tribble kept telling them she was going to leave Clark to be with him.
https://www.sao10.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Tribble.jpg600480Kaitlyn Pearsonhttps://www.sao10.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Office-of-the-State-Attorney-10th-Judicial-Circuit-Logo.pngKaitlyn Pearson2017-11-08 16:11:442017-11-08 16:12:40JURY VERDICT: Winter Haven woman charged with murder, sentenced to life
Chase Woolman began making sexual advances toward his victim when she was only 14-years-old.
Chase Woolman, 28, of Lake Wales.
Woolman sexually abused her for three years, taking advantage of the student-teacher relationship he had with her. Woolman was convicted of sexual battery and lewd molestation Friday and was sentenced to 15 years in prison, followed by 15 years of probation.
The girl had been a student at Woolman’s taekwondo school since she was 8, and the abuse began while she and other students were at a taekwondo training in 2010. Woolman started by simply touching her inappropriately, but their interaction eventually led to intercourse.
On a controlled phone call with law enforcement, Woolman admitted to having sex with his student and said he was “concerned every day the police were going to show up” and take him to jail. The victim told Woolman she felt that because he was in a leadership role in her life, she thought she could trust him.
Woolman apologized to the girl for breaking that trust.
https://www.sao10.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Wollman.jpg480400Kaitlyn Pearsonhttps://www.sao10.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Office-of-the-State-Attorney-10th-Judicial-Circuit-Logo.pngKaitlyn Pearson2017-11-03 15:21:492017-11-03 15:22:40SENTENCING UPDATE: Taekwondo teacher sentenced to 15 years for molesting student
After being fired from a job where he allegedly flashed a young girl, Adam Tharp spent his spare time stalking children at libraries in hopes of exposing himself to them.
Adam Tharp, 24, of Winter Haven.
Tharp, 24, of Winter Haven, pled guilty to lewd or lascivious exhibition Friday. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, followed by 15 years of probation, by Judge Abdoney, who said Tharp’s actions were “alarming.”
The first reported incident was in May 2015 when Tharp was working at an auction house. A little girl went to the concession stand to get Cheetos and Pepsi, and she said Tharp turned around to face her with his genitalia out.
The child immediately ran back to her mother and told her what happened. Tharp claimed that the girl saw his finger and nothing else, but he was fired shortly after.
A year later, in May of 2016, Tharp began frequenting libraries in Polk County, specifically in Lakeland and Winter Haven.
Assistant State Attorney Ashley McCarthy said he would walk through the aisles of the children’s section and peek through the bookshelves to find little girls who were not with their parents. Evidence showed that Tharp crouched down and showed himself to at least one girl at the Winter Haven library.
Security footage from both libraries caught Tharp stalking little girls. Tharp admitted it was him in the video and told detectives he has a desire to expose himself to young girls.
https://www.sao10.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Adam-Tharp.jpg600480Kaitlyn Pearsonhttps://www.sao10.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Office-of-the-State-Attorney-10th-Judicial-Circuit-Logo.pngKaitlyn Pearson2017-11-02 16:03:322017-11-02 16:03:32SENTENCING UPDATE: Man who stalked young girls, flashed them sentenced to 10 years
It only took jurors two hours at the end of a four-week trial to find Auban Carter guilty of first-degree murder.
Auban Carter, 27.
Carter was involved in a 2015 home-invasion robbery that resulted in the death of Kody Zawalski. Two others were critically injured in the incident, and a fourth victim was struck.
Carter was convicted Friday and was immediately sentenced to life in prison with no parole.
Levi Atkinson, who was shot and paralyzed during the shooting, told jurors what happened on January 11, 2015.
He and eight other friends were hanging out at their home when two armed gunmen came into the house demanding drugs and money. Atkinson was in the shower when Carter and his co-defendant entered the home, but he heard his brother’s voice and could tell something was wrong.
When Atkinson came out of the bathroom, he saw two men wearing bandanas over their faces – one was holding what appeared to be an assault rifle, and the other had a handgun. He told the gunmen that they didn’t have anything as his younger brother Tommy handed them a backpack.
That’s when a warning shot was fired.
“The reality of it set in,” Atkinson said, recalling that his ears were ringing. “They were actually about to shoot us.”
Atkinson told jurors that he was standing at the end of Carter’s rifle, with it pointed directly at him. Carter’s bandana mask was no longer covering his face, and Atkinson saw his face.
Carter tried to hit Atkinson with the butt of the gun, and then another shot rang out.
“That’s when Tommy got hit. He got shot in the chest,” Atkinson said.
He tried to push Carter out of the room, placing his left hand on Carter’s chest and pushing until he was through the front door. But when Atkinson turned around to run toward his brother, he heard another shot.
“I hit the ground so fast,” Atkinson said. “I instantly couldn’t feel my legs anymore.”
One of Atkinson’s friends picked him up and carried him out of the house as Carter continued to shoot at his friends – he heard at least 10 extra shots. As he was carried out, Atkinson saw his brother grasping at his wound and Zawalski lying on the kitchen floor.
Assistant State Attorney John Waters told the jury that there was a lot of circumstantial evidence linking Carter to the murder of Zawalski.
Assistant State Attorney John Waters addresses the jury. (File Photo)
Carter was found in possession of the murder weapon and similar bullets four days after the shooting, and his cell phone was located in the area of the crime at the time it occurred. His cell phone data was extracted, and it shows that Carter accessed multiple news websites right after the shooting.
“The history showed he’d never once accessed any type of news source,” Waters said.
His co-defendant also testified that Carter took part in the robbery and shot and killed Kody Zawalski.
Five of the victims all identified Carter in court, but the defense claimed that they were lying and colluding with each other. The defense even called in an expert witness to prove that point.
But Waters told the jury that two of the victims were inches away from Carter. Atkinson echoed that during his testimony in court.
“I am 100 percent, 1,000 percent positive that’s him,” Atkinson said, choking up. “I can’t forget that. … I think about his face all the time.”
In closing arguments, Waters reminded the jury about how Carter searched news sites for any mention of the shooting shortly after he committed it.
“You never look at the news and then all the sudden do hours after the murder, and you’re found in possession of the murder weapon,” he said. “There’s no logical inference anyone but the defendant did it.”
https://www.sao10.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Carter.jpg480400Kaitlyn Pearsonhttps://www.sao10.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Office-of-the-State-Attorney-10th-Judicial-Circuit-Logo.pngKaitlyn Pearson2017-11-01 16:18:372017-11-01 16:20:23JURY VERDICT: Carter convicted of first-degree murder for fatal home-invasion robbery
Harold Parker groomed his victims to both expect and accept his abuse.
Harold Parker, 63, of Lakeland.
He bought the three victims clothes and toys while he took care of them after school, and when he’d end up alone with one of the girls, Parker would sexually abuse her.
“He made the despicable seem normal,” Assistant State Attorney Lauren Randall told the jurors.
After an hour and a half of deliberation, a jury found him guilty Oct. 11 of two counts of sexual battery and one count of attempted sexual battery. He faces a mandatory life sentence, which will be imposed on December 1.
When Parker babysat the girls every day after school, he would sometimes take them to the glass cutting shop he worked at. They would play games on the computer while sitting on his lap, and he would touch them inappropriately.
Parker would also abuse the girls in various places, waiting until he was alone with one of the girls before he touched her. On a few occasions, the youngest victim would ask Parker why he kept abusing her – he never gave her an answer but told her not to tell her mom.
A taped statement from the youngest victim was played in court, and the girl said she made excuses to stay away from him, but it felt like he still touched her every other time she went over to his house.
“It was whenever he could,” the victim said.
The oldest of the three victims was 10 when she finally realized that what Parker was doing to her was wrong. But their families had a falling out in 2012, and the girls didn’t run into him again for four years.
Randall said the victims’ grandfather was with them when they ran into Parker at a grocery store – he saw the girls’ expressions change from “happy go lucky to closed in and scared.” He realized something had happened between them, and Parker was reported to law enforcement.
A controlled phone call was conducted between Parker and the oldest victim. She told him that before he was allowed back in their lives, she wanted to make sure the touching never happened again.
“We’ll start fresh … It’s never going to happen again, dear,” Parker told her, “That I can promise you.”
On another controlled call, Parker said, “You’ll never believe how sorry I am for everything that happened in the past.”
The victim told him that she talked to her sister about the ways he abused them, and they never wanted it to happen again.
Parker’s answer was simple: “Absolutely.”
The defense attorney claimed Parker’s statements on the controlled phone call weren’t enough to prove he was guilty. He claimed that there was a rush to judgement because no medical or physical evidence existed – only statements from the victims.
Randall told the jurors that it was impossible for there to be any fingerprints or DNA from incidents that happened seven years ago. She also reminded them that there was evidence in that all three victims were consistent in who abuse them, where the abuse took place and the specific acts that happened.
But it was the phone call, Randall said, that provided proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
“It proves beyond all doubt that Harold Parker did something to these girls. … He accepted responsibility of it. He was in agreement with her and never denied it,” Randall told jurors in her closing argument. “The phone call was him acknowledging the abuse and admitting it will absolutely never happen again. He was apologizing. That all goes toward your conviction that this man committed this crime.”
https://www.sao10.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Harold-Parker.jpg600480Kaitlyn Pearsonhttps://www.sao10.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Office-of-the-State-Attorney-10th-Judicial-Circuit-Logo.pngKaitlyn Pearson2017-10-18 16:40:222017-10-18 16:46:19JURY VERDICT: Lakeland man guilty of sexual battery on two girls, attempted on another
JURY VERDICT: Haines City man sexually battered girl, got her pregnant
/in SAO10 Blog /by Kaitlyn PearsonDNA testing revealed there was a 99.99 percent chance Delwyn Manuel was the father of his victim’s unborn child.
Delwyn Manuel, 53, of Haines City.
The jury deliberated for about 45 minutes, convicting 53-year-old Manuel on Nov. 1 of sexual battery with familial or custodial authority. He is facing life in prison and will be sentenced Dec. 15.
Assistant State Attorney Will Dennis told jurors that the 15-year-old victim was vomiting and complaining of her stomach hurting. When her mother took her to the hospital, doctors notified her she was six weeks pregnant.
In interviews with law enforcement, the victim said she was abused while being babysat at Manuel’s house after everyone was asleep.
She said the majority of the time Manuel forced himself on her was while she was trying to sleep on the couch. But there was at least one time when she was looking for a DVD and he told her, “We are going to have sex.”
The victim told detectives she was unsure how many times Manuel had sex with her. When FDLE compared fetal tissue from the victim with a DNA sample from Manuel, it was a match.
The defense told jurors that the victim could not remember exactly when the batteries occurred, which meant that she was being untruthful. He said her embarrassment an even bigger indicator that she wasn’t telling the truth.
Assistant State Attorney Will Dennis addresses jurors during closing arguments Nov. 1.
But Dennis told them that the victim genuinely struggled to talk about it because the defendant was someone she used to trust.
“She was excited to be around him,” Dennis said. “That all changed when he started sexually battering her and got her pregnant.”
He reminded jurors of the DNA test and that there was a 99 percent probability Manuel was the parent.
“That makes it very clear the defendant should be found guilty as charged,” he said. “This is a clear case.”
JURY VERDICT: Winter Haven woman charged with murder, sentenced to life
/in SAO10 Blog /by Kaitlyn PearsonStar Tribble shot her sleeping boyfriend in the back of the head and left his body on top of their mattress.
Star Tribble, 36, of Winter Haven.
A jury found Tribble guilty Oct. 31 of first-degree murder, tampering with a witness, tampering with physical evidence, assisted tampering with evidence and false report of a crime. Immediately following her conviction, she was sentenced to life in prison.
Assistant State Attorney Kristie Ducharme told jurors evidence showed that Tribble killed Tomorreio Clark in the early morning hours of Feb. 19, 2016.
Their daughter, Damecia Stephens, came home after her shift ended at midnight, and Clark was alive. Stephens said there was no arguing between her parents and that everything appeared normal.
Stephens went to sleep shortly after getting home and was woken up by a loud boom. Minutes later, Tribble came into her bedroom, telling her to pack bags for herself and her two little brothers so all of them could leave.
Tribble, Stephens and her two little brothers all left their Winter Haven home and checked in to a hotel a few miles away.
On Saturday morning, they pick up Tribble’s friend in Cocoa and drive to the Walton County Correctional Facility in Defuniak Springs.
While stopping at a gas station, Tribble hands Stephens a bag and tells her to throw it away. Stephens later told law enforcement that while she did not look in the bag, she noticed that it was a heavy metal object about 8 inches in length.
Tribble picks up her friend, and they all check into a hotel in Walton County. The two visit their boyfriends in prison and then leave to drop Tribble’s friend off and drive back to Polk County.
They arrive at Tribble’s brother’s house in Lakeland early Sunday morning.
Tribble has her kids unpack the trunk as she tells her brother, Kenneth Stacy, that she needs help moving something. She never told him where they were going, but upon returning to her house, she pointed at the bedroom and told Stacy, “He’s in there.”
Stacy went inside to find Clark’s body and immediately confronted Tribble asking her why she didn’t call the police. She told him the police would have asked too many questions, but that she “shot him in the head” because she was sick of him jumping on her.
She asked Stacy to help her move Clark’s body, but he refused. The two drove back to Stacy’s house that evening and didn’t speak about it again.
The next morning when Stephens was getting ready to leave Stacy’s house to go to class, she told her mother she’d forgotten her book at home. Tribble handed her a key to the house and said, “He’s gone.”
Stephens found her father’s body when she got to the house, and she immediately called 911.
Assistant State Attorney Kristie Ducharme. (FILE PHOTO)
Ducharme told jurors that in Tribble’s first interview with law enforcement, she lied. Tribble also told Stephens and her two younger brothers they had to lie to law enforcement as well.
When Stacy was interviewed, he tried to minimize the situation. He didn’t tell detectives that Tribble asked for his help moving the body or that she confessed what she’d done.
Law enforcement knew their stories weren’t adding up, so they interviewed Stephens and Stacy again. They both came clean and told the entire story.
The defense argued that Stephens’ and Stacy’s testimonies could not be trusted because they lied to law enforcement initially.
Ducharme reminded the jurors that the reason they lied was because Tribble threatened them.
“Yes, they lied at first,” she said. “but there was a reason. They consistently gave the same story after that.”
Ducharme also told the jury that Tribble wrote a letter to Stephens before trial started, asking her to change her story and tell police she’d lied in her second interview and then destroy the letter. Ducharme asked them to combine Stephens’ and Stacy’s statements with all of the evidence, especially the ones showing Tribble was tampering with multiple witnesses, which left no reasonable double that Tribble was the one who killed Clark.
As for why Tribble killed Clark, Stephens said while she had witnessed physical violence between her parents when she was a child, she had not witnessed physical violence between the two leading up to the murder. However, in jail phone calls between Tribble and her boyfriend in the Walton Correctional Institution their conversations allude to them having discussed killing Clark in the past.
Tribble’s coworkers said he was getting out of prison a month later, and Tribble kept telling them she was going to leave Clark to be with him.
SENTENCING UPDATE: Taekwondo teacher sentenced to 15 years for molesting student
/in SAO10 Blog /by Kaitlyn PearsonChase Woolman began making sexual advances toward his victim when she was only 14-years-old.
Chase Woolman, 28, of Lake Wales.
Woolman sexually abused her for three years, taking advantage of the student-teacher relationship he had with her. Woolman was convicted of sexual battery and lewd molestation Friday and was sentenced to 15 years in prison, followed by 15 years of probation.
The girl had been a student at Woolman’s taekwondo school since she was 8, and the abuse began while she and other students were at a taekwondo training in 2010. Woolman started by simply touching her inappropriately, but their interaction eventually led to intercourse.
On a controlled phone call with law enforcement, Woolman admitted to having sex with his student and said he was “concerned every day the police were going to show up” and take him to jail. The victim told Woolman she felt that because he was in a leadership role in her life, she thought she could trust him.
Woolman apologized to the girl for breaking that trust.
SENTENCING UPDATE: Man who stalked young girls, flashed them sentenced to 10 years
/in SAO10 Blog /by Kaitlyn PearsonAfter being fired from a job where he allegedly flashed a young girl, Adam Tharp spent his spare time stalking children at libraries in hopes of exposing himself to them.
Adam Tharp, 24, of Winter Haven.
Tharp, 24, of Winter Haven, pled guilty to lewd or lascivious exhibition Friday. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, followed by 15 years of probation, by Judge Abdoney, who said Tharp’s actions were “alarming.”
The first reported incident was in May 2015 when Tharp was working at an auction house. A little girl went to the concession stand to get Cheetos and Pepsi, and she said Tharp turned around to face her with his genitalia out.
The child immediately ran back to her mother and told her what happened. Tharp claimed that the girl saw his finger and nothing else, but he was fired shortly after.
A year later, in May of 2016, Tharp began frequenting libraries in Polk County, specifically in Lakeland and Winter Haven.
Assistant State Attorney Ashley McCarthy said he would walk through the aisles of the children’s section and peek through the bookshelves to find little girls who were not with their parents. Evidence showed that Tharp crouched down and showed himself to at least one girl at the Winter Haven library.
Security footage from both libraries caught Tharp stalking little girls. Tharp admitted it was him in the video and told detectives he has a desire to expose himself to young girls.
JURY VERDICT: Carter convicted of first-degree murder for fatal home-invasion robbery
/in SAO10 Blog /by Kaitlyn PearsonIt only took jurors two hours at the end of a four-week trial to find Auban Carter guilty of first-degree murder.
Auban Carter, 27.
Carter was involved in a 2015 home-invasion robbery that resulted in the death of Kody Zawalski. Two others were critically injured in the incident, and a fourth victim was struck.
Carter was convicted Friday and was immediately sentenced to life in prison with no parole.
Levi Atkinson, who was shot and paralyzed during the shooting, told jurors what happened on January 11, 2015.
He and eight other friends were hanging out at their home when two armed gunmen came into the house demanding drugs and money. Atkinson was in the shower when Carter and his co-defendant entered the home, but he heard his brother’s voice and could tell something was wrong.
When Atkinson came out of the bathroom, he saw two men wearing bandanas over their faces – one was holding what appeared to be an assault rifle, and the other had a handgun. He told the gunmen that they didn’t have anything as his younger brother Tommy handed them a backpack.
That’s when a warning shot was fired.
“The reality of it set in,” Atkinson said, recalling that his ears were ringing. “They were actually about to shoot us.”
Atkinson told jurors that he was standing at the end of Carter’s rifle, with it pointed directly at him. Carter’s bandana mask was no longer covering his face, and Atkinson saw his face.
Carter tried to hit Atkinson with the butt of the gun, and then another shot rang out.
“That’s when Tommy got hit. He got shot in the chest,” Atkinson said.
He tried to push Carter out of the room, placing his left hand on Carter’s chest and pushing until he was through the front door. But when Atkinson turned around to run toward his brother, he heard another shot.
“I hit the ground so fast,” Atkinson said. “I instantly couldn’t feel my legs anymore.”
One of Atkinson’s friends picked him up and carried him out of the house as Carter continued to shoot at his friends – he heard at least 10 extra shots. As he was carried out, Atkinson saw his brother grasping at his wound and Zawalski lying on the kitchen floor.
Assistant State Attorney John Waters told the jury that there was a lot of circumstantial evidence linking Carter to the murder of Zawalski.
Assistant State Attorney John Waters addresses the jury. (File Photo)
Carter was found in possession of the murder weapon and similar bullets four days after the shooting, and his cell phone was located in the area of the crime at the time it occurred. His cell phone data was extracted, and it shows that Carter accessed multiple news websites right after the shooting.
“The history showed he’d never once accessed any type of news source,” Waters said.
His co-defendant also testified that Carter took part in the robbery and shot and killed Kody Zawalski.
Five of the victims all identified Carter in court, but the defense claimed that they were lying and colluding with each other. The defense even called in an expert witness to prove that point.
But Waters told the jury that two of the victims were inches away from Carter. Atkinson echoed that during his testimony in court.
“I am 100 percent, 1,000 percent positive that’s him,” Atkinson said, choking up. “I can’t forget that. … I think about his face all the time.”
In closing arguments, Waters reminded the jury about how Carter searched news sites for any mention of the shooting shortly after he committed it.
“You never look at the news and then all the sudden do hours after the murder, and you’re found in possession of the murder weapon,” he said. “There’s no logical inference anyone but the defendant did it.”
JURY VERDICT: Lakeland man guilty of sexual battery on two girls, attempted on another
/in SAO10 Blog /by Kaitlyn PearsonHarold Parker groomed his victims to both expect and accept his abuse.
Harold Parker, 63, of Lakeland.
He bought the three victims clothes and toys while he took care of them after school, and when he’d end up alone with one of the girls, Parker would sexually abuse her.
“He made the despicable seem normal,” Assistant State Attorney Lauren Randall told the jurors.
After an hour and a half of deliberation, a jury found him guilty Oct. 11 of two counts of sexual battery and one count of attempted sexual battery. He faces a mandatory life sentence, which will be imposed on December 1.
When Parker babysat the girls every day after school, he would sometimes take them to the glass cutting shop he worked at. They would play games on the computer while sitting on his lap, and he would touch them inappropriately.
Parker would also abuse the girls in various places, waiting until he was alone with one of the girls before he touched her. On a few occasions, the youngest victim would ask Parker why he kept abusing her – he never gave her an answer but told her not to tell her mom.
A taped statement from the youngest victim was played in court, and the girl said she made excuses to stay away from him, but it felt like he still touched her every other time she went over to his house.
“It was whenever he could,” the victim said.
The oldest of the three victims was 10 when she finally realized that what Parker was doing to her was wrong. But their families had a falling out in 2012, and the girls didn’t run into him again for four years.
Randall said the victims’ grandfather was with them when they ran into Parker at a grocery store – he saw the girls’ expressions change from “happy go lucky to closed in and scared.” He realized something had happened between them, and Parker was reported to law enforcement.
A controlled phone call was conducted between Parker and the oldest victim. She told him that before he was allowed back in their lives, she wanted to make sure the touching never happened again.
“We’ll start fresh … It’s never going to happen again, dear,” Parker told her, “That I can promise you.”
On another controlled call, Parker said, “You’ll never believe how sorry I am for everything that happened in the past.”
The victim told him that she talked to her sister about the ways he abused them, and they never wanted it to happen again.
Parker’s answer was simple: “Absolutely.”
The defense attorney claimed Parker’s statements on the controlled phone call weren’t enough to prove he was guilty. He claimed that there was a rush to judgement because no medical or physical evidence existed – only statements from the victims.
Randall told the jurors that it was impossible for there to be any fingerprints or DNA from incidents that happened seven years ago. She also reminded them that there was evidence in that all three victims were consistent in who abuse them, where the abuse took place and the specific acts that happened.
But it was the phone call, Randall said, that provided proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
“It proves beyond all doubt that Harold Parker did something to these girls. … He accepted responsibility of it. He was in agreement with her and never denied it,” Randall told jurors in her closing argument. “The phone call was him acknowledging the abuse and admitting it will absolutely never happen again. He was apologizing. That all goes toward your conviction that this man committed this crime.”