AKRON, Ohio — Testimony began Wednesday in the trial for a man accused of shooting a killing an 18-year-old woman during a drive-by shooting in June of 2020.
“Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! And Nakia is brutally shot,” Assistant Summit County Prosecutor Brian Stano said to the jury, describing the horrific details when Na'kia Crawford was shot to death on June 14, 2020.
She graduated high school just a week earlier.
Adarus Black, 19, is charged with murder.
"She, by all accounts and all evidence, was an innocent 18-year-old girl,” Stano said.
There was also emotional testimony from Lynn Williams, Nakia's grandmother who was there in the car with Crawford when she was shot.
"We never made it home,” Williams said.
Minutes earlier, Crawford had driven her grandma to an ATM, but on their way home, at a stoplight at the intersection of North and Howard streets, the stunning tragedy unfolded.
"We heard the bullet come through the window, through the front windshield, the first one that I noticed,” Williams said.
Williams wasn't hurt, but she realized her granddaughter had been shot inside her granddaughter’s white Malibu.
"I noticed there was a mark right here on Nakia's throat and she said, 'Nannee, I think I got shot,’” Williams said. "She was talking to me. I was trying to hold pressure on it. She just blanked out."
Prosecutors played body camera video from officers who responded to the deadly shooting.
The video captured shattered glass, bullet holes in the car, efforts by officer Derrick Jackson to provide first aid to Crawford, and the heartbroken grandmother trying to comprehend how this happened.
"There were several people outside of the vehicle running all over the place. It was a very, very chaotic scene,” Jackson said.
Prosecutors contend Black fired the deadly shots from the passenger seat of a black Camaro, and after the shooting, went into hiding for 20 months until he was found by federal agents last February in Georgia.
The defense says Black isn't the killer.
“What is in dispute is whether or not Adarus Black is responsible, and we are saying that he is not,” defense attorney John Alexander said.
Akron police call this a case of mistaken identity, believing the wrong car was hit with a barrage of bullets.
Prosecutors believe evidence gathered during a lengthy investigation will prove Black pulled the trigger.
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