Ceola Jones-Willis said she still texts and calls her son, even though he was fatally shot more than two years ago in a mass shooting that started with a dispute over a driveway being blocked.
Speaking in a Wayne County courtroom on Wednesday before the sentencing of the man who killed her son, Jones-Willis said she knows the messages to her son, Andre Willis, will go unanswered. And Willis’s daughters, now 5 and 8, still ask for their father. She said she feels guilty about life going on without her son.
“All that he was to us is no more, because he’s gone,” she told Wayne Circuit Court Judge Mark Slavens, remaining composed during her statement, and often using her nickname for her son, “Boy.” Supporters of Willis, wearing T-shirts with his picture, filled one side of the courtroom.
Willis was one of eight people shot, two fatally, by Winston Kirtley, who was sentenced to two life sentences on Wednesday after a jury found him guilty in late July of first-degree murder, six counts of attempted murder, discharge of a weapon at a building causing injury and nine counts of felony firearm.
Prosecutors say Kirtley killed Willis, 38, and Toyake Thirkeild, 39, on July 31, 2022 when he woke up early in the morning and found the two in a car blocking his driveway on Coyle Street. During his trial earlier this summer, Kirtley testified that he acted in self defense, retrieving a gun after Willis pointed a pistol at him. But prosecutor James Kehoe argued there was no evidence Willis had a gun and one was never found.
Slavens said he has not been able to understand why Kirtley killed Willis and Thirkeild, even after having witnessed the whole trial.
“Why? I just don’t understand it,” Slavens said.
Aside from the two life sentences, Slavens also sentenced Kirtley to a two-year sentence for each felony firearm count, between 18 and 37 years for the assault charges, and between seven and 13 years for the weapon discharge count.
Slavens told Jones-Willis he couldn’t imagine the grief she has gone through. He paused once as he spoke, seemingly searching for his words.
“I just want to tell you how proud I believe your son would be of you, and how you represented him today,” he told Willis’ mother, who came to court for every day of proceedings in Kirtley’s case. One woman in the courtroom smiled as Slavens read out Kirtley’s life sentences, and another man pumped the air with his fist in relief.
Kirtley shot Willis 12 times and Thirkeild six times, Kehoe said. Kirtley testified he later shot at two other men who he said fired at him from across the street.
Kirtley’s defense attorney, James Schlaff, said during the trial he had the right to act in self-defense even if he turned out to be wrong about seeing a gun. He asked Slavens for leniency in sentencing on the assault convictions given Kirtley’s lack of a previous criminal record, military service and mental illness — the latter two, Schlaff said, are linked.
“He’s not quite the man that everyone’s making him out to be,” Schlaff said.
Kirtley was found incompetent to stand trial and remained so for almost two years. Mental competence refers to a criminal defendant’s capacity to have a rational understanding of the accusations against them and assist in their own defense.
Addressing the court briefly before his sentence was imposed, Kirtley said he didn’t know Thirkeild at all, apologizing to her family for her having gotten caught in the middle of his scuffle with Willis.
“Her life was lost in the process,” Kirtley said.
Kehoe read victim impact statements from two of Willis’ cousins and his aunt. His family members described Willis, an “old soul” who loved cars, as dependable, a person anyone could go to as a confidant and a “wellspring of joy.”
“It’s as if an entire population of souls was lost in a single moment,” his cousin, Corey Lamont, Jr., said in a written statement read by Kehoe.
___
© 2024 The Detroit News
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
