‘Hand of one is hand of all,’ prosecutor says in case of slain Columbia baker
Lookout or innocent bystander?
The long-delayed trial of the third defendant charged in the 2013 robbery and murder of Columbia baker Kelly Hunnewell — a single mother, working at night to support her children — started Monday in the Richland County Courthouse.
“When two or more people band together to commit a crime ... the hand of one is the hand of all,” Assistant 5th Circuit Solicitor Barney Giese told jurors. “It’s the law in South Carolina.”
Giese outlined the state’s case against defendant Troy Stevenson, 23. Prosecutors allege Stevenson was the lookout for two men who went into the commercial bakery where Hunnewell, 33, was working about 3:30 a.m. on July 1, 2013, shooting and killing the baker.
“None of this would have happened if they had not had a lookout,” Giese told the jury.
But Stevenson’s attorney, Aimee Zmroczek, served up a starkly different version of events.
The two men who went into the bakery — Lorenzo Young and Trenton Barnes — were the only ones responsible for Hunnewell’s death, Zmroczek told jurors.
Stevenson, who is Barnes’ brother and Young’s friend, was at home the night of the fatal shooting, Zmroczek said. The defense will show Stevenson’s mother sent him to the scene to get his brother, a version of events supported by cellphone records, Zmroczek said.
“There are two phone calls to his house while the two guilty parties were down there,” Zmroczek said. “There was no plan, no conspiracy.”
A security video will show Stevenson stuck his head in the bakery’s open door during the killing, then pulled it back, Zmroczek told jurors. But, she added, her client just had arrived on the scene and was shocked at what he saw.
“Being present at a crime that two others have committed does not make it the ‘hand of one’ being ‘the hand of all,’ “ Zmroczek said. “It doesn’t make him a lookout.”
In 2014, a Richland County jury convicted Young and Barnes of murder. Young, 24, now is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Barnes, 22, won’t be eligible for parole until 2066.
In his remarks, Giese stressed the horror of the murder.
Hunnewell, he said, was a hard-working single mother, devoted to her four school-age children. She worked the 3-to-11 a.m. shift making bagels so that she could spend more time with them.
But that morning, “Kelly Hunnewell never made it back home,” Giese said. After being shot, “she suffocated on her own blood. ... She didn’t make it back because three men decided she wasn’t going to make it back.”
Another aspect of the tragedy was underscored by testimony from the prosecution’s first witness — Johnathan Brayboy, the Columbia police officer who was first on the scene of the shooting.
Brayboy, who patrolled the neighborhood where the bakery was located, had met Hunnewell a month before her slaying. He had noted Hunnewell worked alone in the early morning hours with the door open at the bakery at 13 Tommy Circle.
“I made contact with her and told her that is not a smart idea,” Brayboy testified, adding it was a rough neighborhood.
According to evidence in the case, the killers had intended to rob a nearby bar, but it was closed. Instead, they entered Hunnewell’s bakery, attracted by its bright light and open door.
The trial before S.C. Circuit Court Judge Deadra Jefferson is expected to last all week.
Giese, a former 5th Circuit solicitor for 16 years, is trying the case with former Circuit Court Judge Knox McMahon, who had 20 years’ experience as an assistant prosecutor before becoming a judge.
Interim Fifth Circuit Solicitor Heather Weiss hired McMahon and Giese to handle complex cases after the solicitor’s office was hit by a wave of resignations and retirements after state state and federal corruption charges were filed against now-suspended Solicitor Dan Johnson.
This story was originally published December 10, 2018 at 7:04 PM.