Teens gunned down at Mobile intersection were ‘soft targets’ of gang war, detective testifies

By Brendan Kirby

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    MOBILE, Alabama (WALA) — Two teenagers gunned down at a busy intersection in March were victims of an ongoing war between rival gangs, a police detective testified Monday.

Detective Glenn Barton testified at a preliminary hearing that Kourtlen Keonte Parker, 21, was the head of a Mobile-based gang called 2K Babies, or 2KB. The officer said Parker’s cousin had been murdered and that he sought revenge against members of a gang called South End that operates in the south Dauphin Island Parkway area.

Mobile police have said they have battled violent, arresting 44 gang members over the past few months.

Parker was particularly incensed by a “dis music video” posted seven days after that killing, according to the testimony. Barton testified that the victims of the March 18 retaliatory shooting, 19-year-old Cameron Montgomery and 16-year-old Ja’Kobi Freeman may have been “soft targets” who were loosely associated with members of the South End gang.

Barton testified that a gold car rolled up next to Freeman and Montgomery as they sat on Azalea Road at the intersection of Cottage Hill Road. He said 16 different bullets him Freeman, while Montgomery suffered 12 gunshots. The testimony was too much for some of the victims’ relatives, who wore white shirts and sat in the first row of the courtroom at Government Plaza.

“It was hard to hear,” said Shaquita Montgomery, the 19-year-old victim’s mother. “It was hard to hear how many times my child was shot. But still, justice has got to be served – for both of them.”

Added Verjessica Harris, Freeman’s mother: “Heart-breaking, man. My baby was 16. He had his whole life ahead of him.”

Mobile County Assistant District Attorney Lauren Walsh told FOX10 News outside the courtroom that she has no reason to believe Freeman or Montgomery had anything to do with killing of Parker’s cousin.

“I would submit these are two innocent victims,” she said. “The victim Cameron Montgomery’s mother said that she believed him to be a soft target, but we don’t have anything to indicate anything but these were two innocent victims.”

The detective testified that bullets from three different kinds of kinds hit the victims. So far, only Parker has been charged with murder. Walsh said the investigation is ongoing.

Mobile County District Judge Spiro Cheriogotis found prosecutors had presented sufficient evidence to send the case to a grand jury. He lamented what appears to be a trend involving rap videos and violence in Mobile County.

“Far too many young men lose their lives in this county over what amounts to nonsense, dis raps” he said. “We, as a society, have fallen very far, and I pray that we get back.”

Defense attorney Chase Dearman argued that there is nothing concrete tying his client to the double homicide.

“There is a ton of circumstantial evidence, but there’s not a single witness,” he told the judge.

The circumstantial evidence, as recounted by Barton, includes conversations between Parker and Mobile County Metro Jail inmates before and after the homicide. In one conversation just after the shootings, Parker told an inmate who had been killed and referred to the victims in a disrespectful manner.

Barton testified that cell tower data show that Parker’s phone was in the vicinity of Azalea and Cottage Hill at the time of the shootings and also matches up with where investigators believe the vehicle was just before that time and later when police found an abandoned vehicle on Bellingrath Road and Half Mile Road That vehicle had been destroyed by fire, but Barton testified that police had recovered some 9mm shell casings from the charred vehicle.

Barton also testified that investigators believe the car where the gunshots came from was a 1999 Lexus that had been used by a man called “Head First Trent” by an anonymous tipster and later identified as Trenteon King, who faces assault charges in connection with a shooting that wounded two people at the M&M Food Mart in Theodore.

Investigators established that King and Parker know one another through Facebook messages, Barton said. He testified that the car bore similarities to the one shown on surveillance video during the shooting of Montgomery and Freeman. Both were four-door vehicles, gold in color. Both had five-point rims with tinted windows.

Prosecutors also referenced rap videos in which Parker seems to brag about the killings.

But Dearman reiterated outside the courtroom that there are no witnesses who actually described the shooters or placed his client at the scene.

“I’ll just say rap lyrics is not beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said.

Cheriogotis also found enough evidence for a grand jury to consider drug and gun theft charges against Parker and other people arrested on June 2 at an apartment off of Airport Boulevard. Mobile police Cpl. Jeremy Burch testified he was there to arrest Parker on the murder charges.

Police found a stash of guns and drugs at the apartment, Burch said. Seized items included about 4 pounds of marijuana in various locations, a half-pound of synthetic marijuana, and eight guns – including two reported stolen in Mississippi and one from Mobile.

Burch also testified that four of the guns had Glock switches, which transforms a semi-automatic gun into a fully automatic firearm capable of firing dozens of rounds in seconds with one pull of the trigger. He said three of those switch devices had been damaged in what appears to be an effort to disable them. He also said police found some of the marijuana in the toilet.

In addition, Burch testified, officers found a switch device that was not attached to a gun.

Burch testified that the defendants regularly engaged in illegal firearms.

“They don’t go to Academy to buy guns,” he said.

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