“By the time the defendant shot at Urel Duncan,” Assistant District Attorney Gretchen Lundgren told a Suffolk Superior Court jury this afternoon, “his anger and his frustration had been growing for ten days.”

Duncan was shot dead on the evening of Sept. 20, 2007, as he sat on the front steps of a Codman Park residence with four friends. One of those friends was also shot, allegedly at the hands of the defendant of whom Lundgren spoke – SHAWN “SHANKS” DAUGHTRY (D.O.B. 5/14/80), a Roxbury resident charged with first-degree murder for Duncan’s slaying, armed assault with intent to murder for the shooting of Duncan’s friend, and related firearms offenses.

“The seeds of that anger and frustration were sown on Sept. 10, 2007, when two younger Academy Homes gang members fired seven shots at the defendant and got away with it.”

Lundgren, a former gang prosecutor now assigned to Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley’s Homicide Unit, told the court that Daughtry was bent on retaliation for an earlier shooting by men he believed to be associated with Academy Homes. Neither Duncan nor his friend was a gang member, however, and neither were the men in their company that evening. Prosecutors say the victims were targeted not because of who they were but where they happened to be.

It was that motive, Lundgren said, that led Daughtry and DEMETRIUS WARDSWORTH (D.O.B. 12/26/88) to arm themselves with loaded handguns, pull the hoods of their sweatshirts up over their faces, and walk up the street to Codman Park – an area where some Academy Homes associates were known to live.
“That anger and that frustration was unleashed on Urel [and the others] when the defendant pulled out his .44 caliber revolver and rained bullets upon them.”

One bullet struck the surviving victim in the foot, while another struck Duncan in the side of his head, “pulverizing the right side of his brain,” Lundgren said. Two women who were also sitting on the front steps with the victims were uninjured.

Lundgren told the court that, despite sustaining a fatal head wound, Duncan was conscious for long enough that he was able to ask his mother, “Mom, who did this to me?”

“The evidence in this case answers Urel Duncan’s question,” Lundgren said.

That evidence included a video surveillance tape that captured images of two men – one in a gray hooded sweatshirt and one in a black hooded sweatshirt – approaching the victims; ballistics evidence recovered from the scene; and gunshot residue particles that were recovered from Daughtry’s left hand.

In addition to that evidence, Lundgren said, was the fact that “it was the defendant with the motive that night” to go into rival territory and shoot at the first people he saw.

The gunmen fled the scene after the shooting, and witnesses were able to provide Boston Police detectives with a description of the attackers. Less than an hour later, Boston Police officers assigned to the Youth Violence Strike Force stopped two men, later identified as Daughtry and Wardsworth, matching those descriptions.

The two men were separated and brought to Boston Police headquarters, where Daughtry gave a statement that Lundgren said was contradictory to Wardsworth’s. In subsequent interviews with police detectives, she said, “The defendant’s statements go from very vague to very self-serving and specific. They become contradictory with each other and nothing short of absurd.”

Furthermore, she told the court, the defendant’s alibi was not corroborated by any other sources.
Lundgren said that Daughtry’s claim to detectives that another man perpetrated the shooting – a man whom Daughtry referred to only as “D” – was “a phantom, a stand-in for the defendant, an attempt to explain away all of the evidence that points to his guilt. And I suggest to you, ladies and gentlemen, that all of the evidence shows that the defendant was the person who murdered Urel Duncan.”

Both men were indicted and arrested in 2008 after an extensive investigation in the Suffolk County Grand Jury. Their cases were severed over prosecutors’ objections, and Wardsworth was convicted of murder and related offenses at his 2009 trial. He is serving a life sentence. On May 17, 2010, a Superior Court jury declared itself hopelessly deadlocked in its deliberations of Daughtry’s role in the shooting; Judge Frank Gaziano declared a mistrial, and the re-trial began this week with jury selection on Monday.

Jennifer Stott is the victim witness advocate assigned to the case. Daughtry is represented by attorney Barry Wilson. Jurors began their deliberations after receiving instructions from Superior Court Judge Frank Gaziano earlier this afternoon; they will resume their deliberations tomorrow. Proceedings were in courtroom 906 in Suffolk Superior Court.