Witness testifies she used county money to buy murder weapon years later

On an October day in 2011, Al Culver agreed to give a friend a ride to a gambling house in east Macon.

Culver, 31, worked at Church’s Chicken. He had a young daughter.

After dropping off his friend on Little Short Street in the Fort Hill neighborhood, Culver never made it back home. When his family got his car later, food that he’d bought at a Japanese restaurant for a late lunch was still on the back seat.

Minutes after dropping off his friend, he was shot to death in his car.

When firefighters found him lifeless inside the black sedan, they had responded to a reported gas fire. Culver’s foot had pushed the gas pedal after he was shot, causing the engine to rev up and eventually for the car to smoke.

By the time authorities arrived, the street was empty. The 100 to 200 people who’d been there had scattered when the gunshot was fired that killed Culver. All witnesses were gone.

There were no shell casings or any other evidence to point investigators to Culver’s killer.

Culver had no felony record or gang ties.

Nearly five years later, 26-year-old Deonte Marquis Kitchens is on trial, charged with murder in Culver’s death. He’s also accused of committing gun and gang-related crimes.

Testimony in the case began Tuesday in Bibb County Superior Court and is scheduled to continue Wednesday.

In her opening statement to the jury, Kitchens’ lawyer, Lauren Deal, said the case against her client is a “zealous prosecution” based on unreliable witnesses with motivation to save themselves.

Deal said authorities took the word of a man charged with robbery and didn’t investigate further to determine if Kitchens’ co-defendant, 36-year-old Kelvin Carswell, may have killed Culver in a carjacking. Carswell, Kitchens’ cousin, was convicted of carjacking in 2012.

There’s no forensic evidence linking Kitchens to the slaying, and there’s no surveillance footage of how the murder weapon, which authorities recovered in 2015, was obtained, she said.

“My client is innocent,” she said.

Tuwanda Smith, a Chicago woman who previously lived in Macon and dated Carswell after the killing, testified Tuesday that she helped authorities recover a revolver she remembered Carswell always seemed to keep close.

Before going to prison in 2012, he’d traded it to another man for drugs, she said.

After she and Carswell broke up, Smith moved back to Chicago.

In early 2015, prosecutors paid for her to fly to Georgia for an interview. When she said she thought she could get them the revolver, prosecutors gave her $400 in county money to make the purchase, Smith said.

She said she volunteered to buy the gun back, but she wouldn’t wear a wire or other surveillance device during the deal, saying it wouldn’t be safe.

She said she met a man at her motel, telling him she needed a gun for protection, and bought the gun. She gave it to a District Attorney’s Office investigator the next morning before flying back to Chicago.

Prosecutor Dorothy Hull said the GBI matched the gun to a bullet removed from Culver’s body during his autopsy.

Smith admitted she was charged with harboring a fugitive in 2012 when she and Carswell were arrested in Mississippi. He’d fled during his Bibb County carjacking trial.

She said Carswell had told her the case had been thrown out of court.

Charges against Smith later were dismissed.

Mistaken identity

In her opening statement to jurors, Hull maintained that Kitchens mistook Culver for another man who he thought had participated in a gang-related shooting days earlier.

Back in 2011, Kitchens operated a “trap house,” a place where drugs are sold, on Woolfolk Street in east Macon, not far from Little Short Street, Hull said.

There was a rivalry between the Fort Hill neighborhood Get Dat Money gang, also known as GDM, and a group based in Macon’s Kings Park neighborhood. Kitchens is a GDM member and Carswell is a GDM leader, Hull said.

There was an altercation between the Fort Hill and Kings Park groups a few days before Culver’s slaying that ended with shots being fired at an east Macon gas station. Hours later, shots were fired at Kitchens’ trap house from a car, one similar to Culver’s sedan, by a man who looked like Culver, Hull said.

Days after Culver was killed, 49-year-old Tracy Brown was charged with attempted armed robbery and claimed to have been on Little Short Street buying drugs when Culver was shot.

He said Kitchens, known on the streets as “Flame,” had shot Culver after saying something about Kings Park, Hull said.

After talking with the man, police charged Kitchens with murder.

Testifying Tuesday, Brown admitted that he had a drug problem in 2011.

Although he denied actually seeing Culver as he was shot, he said he saw Kitchens walking away from the car.

He said the statement he gave police in 2011 — when he said he had overheard Kitchens talking to Culver — was true, but he said he doesn’t remember if he heard a gunshot.

Brown said he was walking in east Macon after serving about four years in prison when a car drove by and someone told him there was a “bounty” on him. He testified that he took that to be a threat that someone was going to kill him.

Hull said it took years of police talking with other witnesses after they were arrested in other crimes to piece together a case to take to trial.

Multiple witnesses who initially denied being in the area later provided details of the case and corroborated each other’s stories, she said.

Although Kitchens and Carswell were indicted together, both charged with Culver’s killing, further investigation confirmed Carswell’s alibi that he was at a downtown Macon store when Culver was shot, but he had knowledge of the killing and involvement with the murder weapon, Hull said.

He’s set to testify during the trial.

This story was originally published September 27, 2016 at 3:47 PM with the headline "Witness testifies she used county money to buy murder weapon years later."