Jury finds Eugenia Dyer guilty in last year’s Super Bowl shooting

A jury found Eugenia Dyer guilty in a double shooting during last year’s Super Bowl.

She was convicted on all four counts for shooting her brother and cousin near Rice Road in Columbia on February 2, 2014. Dyer’s case originally ended in a mistrial back in March.

She was charged with assault, domestic assault, and two counts of armed criminal action.

The jury, though, suggested ten and fifteen years for the domestic assault and assault charges respectively, as well as three and five years for the two armed criminal action charges. Ten years is the minimum sentence for both assault charges, which are class A felonies.

Judge Kevin Crane will ultimately decide Dyer’s sentence on July 20, but he cannot choose a length of time greater than the ones the jury provided during jury sentencing Thursday night.

During the trial, the defense brought up multiple law enforcement officials who interviewed the people involved in the shooting incident.

The defense was trying to prove that in initial interviews with law enforcement, some witnesses at the party left out multiple details of the event and have changed their stories about what happened that night in an attempt to discredit them to the jury.

The state rested around 2:00 p.m., but not before bringing up its own witnesses.

The state brought up the brother of Dyer and one of her shooting victims, Courtenez.

He said he doesn’t know why Dyer pulled out a gun and started shooting, and said he had a good relationship with his sister. He even said said “I still love you” while on the stand.

The defense disagreed and said the shooting was self-defense, and that Dyer was being attacked by her brother, Courtenez, and her cousin Jermaine, the two men she shot.

Court documents describe a “blood trail” going from the home’s front door to the driveway. The prosecution said Dyer became enraged after seeing one of the men playing with another woman’s hair.

That woman took the stand at around 3 p.m. Tuesday. She said everyone at the party was happy; playing cards and dancing until Dyer got upset about the flirting, and said “stop playing with her hair.”

Soon after, Dyer fired the shots. She claims it was self-defense because the two men were attacking her.

On Thursday, the prosecution tried to show the jury that Dyer was never attacked.

Under oath, the detective said Dyer never asked for medical attention and showed no signs of being strangled like she claims she was. She had no redness around the neck or lacerations of any kind.

But the defense fired back, saying Dyer did say she was attacked during the interview, so, why didn’t the detective take any pictures of the uninjured neck or face?

(Editor’s note: This is an updated story as Dyer’s case moves along.)