A jury convicted a Gary man Friday after two hours in the death of a 23-year-old man on Chase Street last year.
Virgil King, 23, was convicted of murder and unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon, a spokeswoman for the Lake County District Attorney’s Office said.
According to the court, his sentencing date is July 18.
During the trial, the victim’s mother, ZsaKenya Mathews, said she found her son, Daqwuan Walker, 23, fatally shot on Jan. 25, 2023, outside the building on the 500 block of Chase Street where they lived.
Authorities charged two men. Co-defendant Micah Sanders, 25, signed a plea deal last week. His DNA was found on a Stoeger pistol that was attached to all but one of the shell casings at the crime scene. A second weapon was found two days later.
Sanders faces 45 years in prison if Judge Gina Jones accepts the deal.
Near the end of closing arguments Friday, Deputy Prosecutor Maureen Koonce conceded that the evidence against King was “circumstantial.”
She claimed the video showed Sanders and King surveilling the neighborhood two hours before the shooting, and were caught on security tape leaving the scene.
They then regrouped in an alley and were arrested together within 30 minutes of the shooting at a woman’s apartment just over a half-mile southeast of the 2500 block of Waverly Drive.
Investigators were unable to identify any direct witnesses or video footage. Still, Koonce argued, King was “just as guilty” because she alleged he was involved in the crime, a legal term known as accessory liability.
“It doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger,” she told jurors. “That’s what the law says.”
Defense attorney Adam Tavitas said prosecutors did not have the evidence.
“I think him being part of it was “not good enough,” he said. Their case was based on ‘assumptions’.
Mathews testified Tuesday that a young woman ran away with Walker that morning when the shooting began. She couldn’t remember her name, but said she ran into her in Gary earlier this year.
On the stand Thursday, Det. James Nielsen said that despite his repeated efforts — tracking down video to see where she ran, searching Walker’s social media and cell phone — he never learned her name or located her before the trial.
Tavitas said there were too many holes in the evidence.
Besides the woman, the owner of a truck, who can be seen in the background, never responded to police to give an interview.
Nielsen said he tried several times last year and again on Tuesday — when the process was already underway, Tavitas noted. The detective stated that he could not force people to cooperate.
Evidence showed the fatal shots came from the Stoeger gun, which contained Sanders’ DNA, the attorney said.
The second gun – a Glock pistol – was discovered two days later by a witness who lived in the Waverly Drive apartment. The gun was at the bottom of a laundry basket he took to a relative’s house to wash clothes.
It contained a mix of the DNA of Sanders, King and Walker, an expert testified Thursday. One shell casing was not linked to the Stoeger pistol, but could not be definitively linked to the Glock either, Tavitas said.
There was “no evidence” that King fired it, the attorney said.
The police did their best to build a criminal case under difficult circumstances, Koonce said.
The woman who lived at the Waverly address stopped cooperating with prosecutors. Her testimony from a bond hearing last year was read aloud Thursday. Her relative, who gave the men a ride and sent them to the Waverly apartment, did not show up to testify at the trial.
Mathews said emotionally on Tuesday after her testimony that her son was a “good father” and “strong, happy person.” He didn’t have any ‘problems’ with anyone.
Police were called at 8:17 a.m. on Jan. 25, 2023, to the 500 block of Chase Street in Gary, where Walker lay lifeless on his back near the stoop of the home, according to court records.
Police found several 9-millimeter bullet casings nearby.
A witness told police that Walker was walking back from a gas station around 6 a.m. when gunshots rang out, according to court records.
Police discovered a dog had been shot on the 500 block of Taney Street not long after Walker’s murder. It was the same type of bullet, the affidavit claims.
A K-9 dog tracked a scent from the crime scene to the same home on the 500 block of Taney and then stopped at a home on the 2500 block of Waverly Drive, five blocks from the murder scene, the complaint said.
Officers surrounded the house. It appeared a man tried to crawl out a back window with possibly a gun in his pocket before slamming it shut. Officers arrested King and Sanders, the affidavit said. Inside were a woman and several children.
A witness told police that King and Sanders knocked on the door asking to come in and he knew them “through us (relative).”
According to court documents, the men had been inside for 10 minutes before police arrived.
mcolias@post-trib.com
