Major HowardDarius McDonald
CLEVELAND, Ohio — The mother of Major Howard testified in court on Monday that she recognized Donnell Lindsey as the man who killed her 3-year-old son in 2015 after police released his photograph to news outlets.
Brittany Anderson said she never saw Lindsey before the Sept. 15 shooting on East 113th Street near Benham Avenue.
“But when I saw his picture on the news, I knew it was him,” she said Monday. “He shot my son.”
The testimony came as part of a days-long hearing where Lindsey’s lawyers will ask Common Pleas Judge John P. O’Donnell to suppress statements to police from Anderson and another eyewitness who each identified Lindsey as the shooter. The lawyers plan to argue that the identification was unfairly influenced because they were exposed to Lindsey’s photograph and street rumors about the killing before they identified him to police.
Lindsey faces aggravated murder and other charges after police said he killed Major and flew to Atlanta where he lived for several months. His trial is expected to begin this summer.
Anderson testified that she took her son to visit her boyfriend, Dexter Mangham, at a friend’s house on East 113th Street.
She and Mangham stood outside the car talking, while Major and another woman sat inside the car. Robert “RJ” Scott III was on the front porch of the home when the front passenger in a white Toyota sedan stuck a pistol out the window and opened fire, Anderson said Monday.
Anderson and Mangham ran toward the house and dove on the ground, Anderson said. The gunfire stopped and the Toyota sped off toward Benham Avenue. A woman in the car opened the door and shouted that she and Major were shot, Anderson said.
A single bullet struck Major’s chest. He was rushed to MetroHealth where he was pronounced dead.
Scott, who is currently serving a prison sentence for burglary, told cleveland.com after the shooting that he believed the bullet that killed Major was meant for him.
Anderson told detectives the day of the shooting that the passenger was a man with “dark brown skin” wearing a light gray hooded sweatshirt. She said she didn’t see the driver.
In the days that followed, Mangham told Anderson that the gunman went by the name Nell, which police and prosecutors say is Lindsey’s street name. She also saw postings on social media that identified Nell as the shooter, she said.
Police obtained an arrest warrant charging Lindsey with the shooting on Sept. 20, 2015. The next day, Anderson went to the police department and picked his photograph out of a lineup.
Donnell LindseyU.S. Marshals
“That was him,” she recalled. “I remember seeing him.”
But Jack Greene of the Cuyahoga County Public Defender’s Office showed Anderson the same lineup that police showed her and asked her to rank the photographs based on skin tone. Anderson put Lindsey at the second-lightest skin tone, which Greene pointed out was in contradiction to the “dark-skinned” description she first gave investigators.
Greene also noted several times that Anderson picked out Lindsey as the shooter after she saw a news story naming him as a suspect in her son’s death. Those news stories, he said, used the same driver’s license photograph of Lindsey that police included in the lineup they gave to Anderson.
Anderson told police during her interview that she saw the photograph on the news, and that she also saw photographs of a second suspect who police said was the driver of the car. But Anderson said she couldn’t pick out the driver’s photograph because she didn’t see the driver, Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Brian Radigan said.
Lindsey’s attorneys plan to call at least eight more witnesses, including six police officers, Scott, and a California-based expert on eyewitness identification. Those hearings are expected to continue through the week.
Mangham was killed in a subsequent drive-by shooting Oct. 1 on Euclid Avenue at East 4th Street in the heart of the city’s downtown entertainment district. Four men face aggravated murder charges in that killing, including Christopher Smith, whose sister was killed in a drive-by shooting hours after Mangham was killed.
Police say the gunfire was tied to a feud between the Benham Boys and 103MurdaBlock gangs. Mangham and Scott were members of the Benham Boys, who claim to be affiliated the national Bloods gang, according to police reports.
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