Witnesses threatened outside courtroom at murder trial, prosecutors say
- Jamie Duffy
- 16 minutes ago
- 4 min read
ALLEN COUNTY, Ind. ---Christopher Recht, the 21-year-old on trial this week for the shooting death of Ayvion Parker and the attempted murder of his little brother, looks studious next to his attorney, David Felts.
Wearing a nice dress shirt and men’s suit and wearing glasses, Wednesday Recht actively and animatedly conferred with Felts and attorney David Joley at the defense table.
But while the fight for Recht’s freedom carried on in court, outside in the hallway threats were being made to witnesses, according to prosecutors.
And one witness came into the courtroom tossing a small yellow lighter in the air as he walked toward the box to testify and, again, on his way out.
Not only that, those in front of the rail noticed the pervasive smell of weed until the bailiffs cleared the gallery.
Morning testimony featured FWPD officers, detectives and two young women, best friends, who were hanging around with the wrong crowd in September 2023.
Their testimony was pivotal.
S.C. was the girl with the car, a black Chevy Cruze. That night, she lent it to Terrance Sanders Jr. because he kept asking her for it, she said.
Sanders was convicted of murder and attempted murder in August of Parker’s murder.
Christopher Recht, on trial this week for the same set of events, was the driver, she told the jury Wednesday, the second day of Recht’s trial.
He’d pulled out a driver’s license to prove he was licensed.
Sanders and Recht got the car about 20 to 30 minutes before police responded to 9-1-1 calls for a shooting at 1:50 a.m. on Sept. 12, 2023, at the Villa Capri apartments, south of Fort Wayne.
S.C. got worried when they didn’t return after about a half hour and was on the verge of calling the police to report her car stolen.
Neither she nor her BFF, O.J. ever thought the two were using the car to go shoot someone, even though the guys had been to a recording studio in Fort Wayne to lay down some tracks on the matter.
Sanders and Recht and two other teens were part of the BSG gang; Ayvion was a member of BMG, Fort Wayne detectives have said.
When David Felts, lead public defender, asked S.C. if she thought Sanders, Recht and a couple of others guys were involved in a gang, S.C. kind of laughed it off.
She saw them, she said, as “just a bunch of _________.”
What word she used at the end of her sentence to describe these fellows she was hanging out with every day or “every other day” would require spending money for a transcript, but it would almost be worth it. It can be difficult to hear in the courtroom.
Several words come to mind, particularly after finding out that they returned her Chevy Cruze on empty.
Sanders was also found guilty of criminal gang activity. Recht faces the same charge. The prosecution says it was Recht who recorded rap videos describing the ambush, something his attorneys tried to remove from the evidence.
The girls testified that at first they weren’t aware of the shootout and when they asked the guys where they’d been, they told them they were at a shootout “but not at Villa Capri apartments.”
Suspicion grew when after the shootout that left Parker dead and his brother wounded with a bullet to his thigh, the BFFs were in the Chevy Cruze with Sanders, Recht and another BSG member in the back seat.
Sitting in the passenger seat, O.J. noticed a bullet hole in the car and sent a text to S.C. who was driving right next to her. She told Helge she was “too scared” to say it out loud and started to cry on the stand.
S.C. was not scared or at least not at that moment. She pulled into a gas station and confronted the guys about it. In gentlemanly gang fashion, the three packed into the gas station and then fled.
Before the shootout, Sanders asked O.J. to attend the party where Parker was and text him who was there. When Helge asked her why she did that, O.J. answered: “Because T.J. asked me.”
Then she feared she would be implicated in the crime and started googling “assisting a criminal,” according to lead homicide detective Aaron Johnson’s probable cause affidavit.
No one has uttered the word “girlfriend,” but what are 19-year-old women looking for when they hang out with these guys, lending out their cars and performing favors? Admiration? Eternal love?
Homicide detective Darrin Strayer took the stand to say how uncooperative the young people were right after Parker was found dead outside the apartment.
The Parker brothers had spent two hours playing Call of Duty with these friends, and possibly associates, but none of them would talk.
The threat of being a snitch is so powerful that Wednesday prosecutors said in court that some of Recht’s people had been threatening witnesses, telling them that now they knew who they were “after they saw their faces.”
One witness who talked to Strayer in an interview after the shooting could barely remember anything Wednesday. Couldn’t even remember whether the Parker boys were there in his apartment or whether Parker’s wounded brother knocked on the door seeking help after the shootout.
His mother, LaToya Booker, did better, testifying that the kids were all playing the video game and she was upstairs asleep when she heard gunshots. There were five shots, she thought, then maybe 15 or 20 more. Detectives found 30 shell casings of three different calibers at the scene.
Strayer was part of the two man team that led the investigation. Johnson sat at the table with Chief Counsel Tesa Helge and Deputy Prosecutor Rebecca Grove.
Helge and David Joley, Felts’ second, argued over one of the female witnesses’ recollection of Recht’s rap music. Of course, she was aware of the songs, but apparently innocent enough to never believe the lyrics were for real. Joley called it hearsay.
Go to YouTube.com to watch homicide detective Darrin Strayer’s testimony.