‘I didn’t mean to shoot,’ suspect told officer

Ryan Ellison didn’t see a single gun in the early morning hours of Oct. 13, 2013 – not until a police officer pointed one in his face, he said.

He had driven to Five Points late that night with his two cousins, another friend and Michael Juan Smith, whom he and others knew as “Flame.”

Smith was dating one of Ellison’s cousins, and the group had planned to go to The Library club on Harden Street, Ellison testified Wednesday at Smith’s trial on six state charges, including attempted murder.

“I never saw no guns the whole night,” Ellison said.

Ellison, now 19, was one of four associates of Smith to testify on the second day of the trial.

Smith, now 22, is accused of firing the bullet that paralyzed USC student Martha Childress two years ago in Five Points while Childress waited with friends for a taxi. He is charged with attempted murder and five weapons charges that, if he is convicted, could get him up to 51 years in state prison. He already has been sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison after pleading guilty last year to a weapons charge related to the shooting.

Ellison said Wednesday he had fallen behind his group that night as they made their way back to their car, walking through the crowded entertainment district near Harden and Greene streets. Ellison testified that he sensed some tension in the crowd and saw one man hold his hands up in the air, and another lifted his shirt on one side.

As he continued walking, he heard gunshots, possibly two or three, he said. He ducked and began to run.

As he witnessed an officer arresting Smith, Ellison said he was targeted by another person who pointed to him and said he, in fact, had a gun.

And that’s when he, too, was put in handcuffs.

Ellison’s testimony came several hours after Smith’s arresting officer opened the second day of witness questioning. A stream of testimonies pieced together a picture from several vantage points on the night of the shooting.

A day earlier, Childress took the stand to give her own account of the shooting that left her paralyzed from the waist down. On Wednesday morning, she returned to the courtroom, accompanied by her parents and several friends.

First on the stand was Columbia police officer Theodore McLaughlin. He testified that he chased Smith, then handcuffed him. “Without prompting, he said, ‘I didn’t mean to shoot,’” McLaughlin said of Smith during the arrest.

Moments before, McLaughlin said, he had heard what sounded like multiple gunshots fired from the direction of the fountain at Greene and Harden streets.

He then saw a young man running, dodging the crowds, holding an object in his jacket pocket. When McLaughlin caught Smith in front of Pop’s Pizza (now Rio’s Pizza and Bagels), about a block from the fountain, he removed from Smith’s jacket pocket a Glock pistol, he said. It was still warm to the touch, he said.

Michael Painter,who was living in Florence, was visiting Five Points with friends on the night of the shooting. Painter said he was standing with his back to the fountain when he saw a man in a tan jacket and tan pants across the street being confronted by two black men wearing black.

“I couldn’t hear anything, but I saw a muzzle flash. ... There was a ‘pop, pop,’ then he took off,” Painter said, describing the man dressed in tan. The man dressed in tan was the only person he saw with a gun that night, Painter said.

Shante Bethel was the only witness who spoke Wednesday to have ever told investigators they saw Smith with a gun that night. Bethel, now 32, had been dating Smith for about a year when the group went to Five Points that night. She knew he had a gun with him, she said, and also knew he was not allowed to have a gun.

“It upset me” that Smith had a gun, she said. He had told her he carried the gun because he had been assaulted in Five Points on a previous occasion.

Like others who testified, Bethel recalled walking ahead of Smith and Ellison with her niece, Asia Bethel, and another woman when a group of men began talking to them, trying to get their attention. At some point, a confrontation arose between those men and Smith.

Then gunshots rang out. And Smith ran.

Bethel was the last of nine witnesses to take the stand Wednesday. Before witness questioning began Wednesday morning – and outside the presence of reporters – jurors were taken to the scene of the alleged crime in Five Points. The trip was meant to give them a better understanding of evidence presented to them in the courtroom, Judge Robert Hood said.

Childress’ shooting in the entertainment area that’s so close to USC shocked the school and surrounding neighborhoods and cast doubt on Five Points as a safe place for students to hang out.

This story was originally published August 12, 2015 at 1:05 PM with the headline "‘I didn’t mean to shoot,’ suspect told officer."