Jamiel Hill wasn’t always aware of her adult son’s comings and goings, even though they lived together in Beltzhoover.
Her first inkling that her son Daimond, 19, might be in trouble came on Aug. 17, 2012, when he called her for a ride to the emergency room after he was shot in the hand. She didn’t report the shooting to police, which isn’t uncommon in her neighborhood, Allegheny County Deputy District Attorney Janet Necessary told a jury Tuesday.
A week later, someone shot at her car as she was headed to the grocery store with her younger son. Ms. Hill sent Daimond to stay somewhere else that night, and paid for a jitney to drive him. But he came back to their Curtain Avenue house the next day, Aug. 26, to retrieve clothes and pain medication he left behind in his haste to go.
Ms. Hill was upstairs in her bedroom when she heard her son walk out the front door and then the sound of gunshots.
“She got out there in time for him to die in her arms,” Ms. Necessary said.
Ms. Hill also told police she saw a man later identified as Deshawn Nelson running down the street, tucking a gun into his clothes as he fled.
Mr. Nelson’s trial, on charges of homicide and related counts, began Tuesday before Common Pleas Court Judge Randal B. Todd. This is the second time prosecutors have brought the case before a jury, after a previous attempt in 2016 resulted in a mistrial.
In her opening statement, Ms. Necessary told jurors that not only did Ms. Hill identify Mr. Nelson, 24, in a photo array as the man who shot her son and the person who fired at her car, but the bullets in Ms. Hill’s car matched those at the scene where her son was killed. Investigators also found a pair of shorts with gunshot residue in Mr. Nelson’s bedroom, the prosecutor said.
But defense attorney Randall H. McKinney told the jury during his opening statements that no murder weapon was found, and Mr. Hill was a known heroin dealer with more than 30 stamp bags of the drug found near his body.
“There’s no evidence that Deshawn Nelson and Daimond Hill even knew each other,” Mr. McKinney said.
And Mr. McKinney also questioned why Ms. Hill didn’t immediately call police after the first two shootings and why she didn’t cooperate with investigators until much later after her son was killed. Mr. McKinney argued that she waited to report the crimes because she didn’t actually know who the shooter was.
“You’re going to have to make the determination whether or not that makes any sense,” he said.
Elizabeth Behrman: Lbehrman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.
First Published: October 31, 2017, 8:49 p.m.