Detective Nick Burke of the Allen County Sheriff’s Office shows jurors the .38 caliber revolver that fired the shot which resulted in the 2021 death of Ja’Kia Battle.
J Swygart | The Lima News
LIMA — A deputy coroner from the Lucas County Coroners Office testified Wednesday that the gunshot that killed Lima resident Ja’Kia Battle in October of 2021 almost certainly did not come from close range.
That opinion was in direct conflict with repeated statements made to law enforcement officials and investigators by Kiara Totty — charged with reckless homicide in connection with the shooting death — that Battle herself pulled the trigger.
Jurors during the second day of Totty’s trial in Allen County Common Pleas Court spent much of their day watching videos — one taken during an extensive interview between Totty and investigators; the other while Totty was being held in the rear of a police cruiser following the incident in question. In both of those videos Totty maintained that Battle died of a self-inflicted wound.
During a voluntary conversation at the Allen County Sheriff’s Office on the night of Oct. 18, 2021, the 34-year-old defendant told investigators Battle — with whom she had an ongoing casual romance for nearly a year — had accidentally taken her own life with a .38 caliber revolver just a few hours earlier at Totty’s resident on Edgewood Drive.
“She was playing around with a gun. I was in the kitchen and I heard ‘click,’ and then nothing,” Totty told investigators during the interview. “Then I heard it a second time … click, then nothing. Then I heard a ‘pop.’”
Totty said she exited the kitchen to find Battle sitting on a couch.
“She had her hand on her chest, then she fell off the couch and onto the floor,” Totty told Allen County Sheriff’s Office Detectives Nick Burke and Corey Hanjora on the video played for jurors. “I thought she was playing around, but then she said, ‘My chest is numb … I can’t breathe. I feel like I’m dying.’”
Totty said she called 911 and law enforcement soon arrived at her residence. Battle was taken to Mercy Health-St. Rita’s Medical Center, where she died the following morning. She was 23 years old at the time.
During afternoon testimony with Deputy Robert Winterstellar of the Allen County Sheriff’s Office on the witness stand, jurors viewed a video of Totty taken from inside the deputy’s squad car. Totty was detained in the immediate aftermath of the shooting as police attempted to sort out what had happened.
On the video Totty, who was hysterical at times, repeatedly asking about Battle’s condition.
“That’s my girlfriend, bro,” she said. “Is she okay? Oh my baby; oh my baby!”
At one point Totty told her mother through the squad car window, “I though (Battle) was just goofin’ around. I didn’t think she shot herself.”
Dr. Jeffrey Hudson, who performed the autopsy on Battle, said the woman died of a single gunshot wound to the chest. His report lists the manner of death as a homicide, “meaning she was shot at the hands of another,” Hudson testified Wednesday.
He based his opinion that the shooting did not take place at close range on the absence of gunpowder “soot” or stippling that is usually present in suicide cases. He also said the location of the wound — in the upper chest near the collarbone — is an “unusual place to shoot yourself.”
Prosecutors may have summoned their final witness on Wednesday, but reserved the right to possibly call one final witness when the trial resumes Thursday morning.
Defense attorney Steve Chamberlain said he does not anticipate calling any witnesses.
A matter of race?
Race briefly became an issue prior to the start of Wednesday’s proceedings when prosecutors told Judge Jeffrey Reed they had been made aware of a potential conflict of interest with one of the jurors.
The female jurist was brought into the courtroom, outside the presence of other jurors, as the judge questioned her about the alleged relationships. The woman said she is “friends with both families,” meaning the victim’s as well as the defendant’s.
She admitted being “uncomfortable” in her role as a jurist, prompting Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Joe Everhart to request her removal from the panel, claiming she had failed to disclose those relationships during the jury selection process.
Defense attorney Steve Chamberlain objected, describing as “suspicious” the state’s request for the removal of “the lone African American juror.”
Everhart said race “has zero to do with the state’s request to strike her.”
Reed ruled that the woman could remain on the jury.
