Prosecutors say DNA and fingerprints on a car door handle from where Knight, a Fairfield High School senior, was shot to death behind the wheel in 2016 points to King’s involvement in the homicide.
But the defense said the person who killed Knight on the morning of March 11, 2016, is still a mystery, continuing after years of investigation that only resulted in King’s arrest in December 2020.
Knight, 18, died in a car in the 300 block of Charles Street. The vehicle was in front of a vacant house resting against it. Knight was slumped over the steering wheel with a large amount of blood inside the vehicle and two bullet holes in the driver’s side window.
But Serina Knight, Jaylon’s mother, testified Tuesday that she found a third bullet when the black Hyundai was returned to her by Hamilton police.
“I was trying to clean it out. There was blood and glass everywhere,” she said . “It (the bullet) was by the glove box. It fell to the floor.”
Recently retired Hamilton detective Jim Smith, a crime scene investigator for 17 years, testified that Knight’s car had two bullet holes in the driver’s side window. Two casings were found at the scene, and one bullet was recovered at autopsy from Knight’s body. After learning of third bullet, Smith said he believes two shots from a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun went through the same hole in the window.
“Three shots were fired. Mr. Knight was hit twice,” he said.
Butler County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser, in his opening statement Monday in Judge Keith Spaeth’s courtroom, said Knight set up a meeting to sell marijuana on the cold, damp morning via cellphone communication with who he thought was a female named “Bri Princess.”
He was directed to a specific location on Charles Street and was told to keep his door unlocked for a quick transaction, according to Gmoser. But when he got to the meeting, a person came out of the dark, shot three times and struck Knight in the head and neck. He was dead at the scene.
Knight’s car moved forward and was found by police with the engine still running. A handle to the driver’s side door was found in the road about 30 feet away. Testing by police eventually indicated King’s DNA and fingerprints on that handle, Gmoser said. He added Knight had not followed instructions and did have his doors locked.
King gave detectives two statements during questioning, one in the summer of 2016 that he was asleep in his basement on Fourth Street and knew nothing about the shooting, Gmoser said.
The second statement came after police knew his DNA was on the handle. King told police he was staying at his father’s home for a doctor’s appointment, heard the lights from police the morning of the incident and put his hand on the passenger side on the car to look in the window, Gmoser told the jury.
Shoeprints taken at the crime and a walk way nearby also looked similar to a Nike tennis shoe found by police on a porch when they went to question King.
The jury saw numerous photos taken by Smith of the shoeprints and of Knight dead in his car with a cellphone in his lap. Smith testified about his testing to match up the door handle to Knight’s car as well as testing for DNA.
While the shoeprints appeared that they were made near the time of the shooting, Smith said he could not date them.
When the indictment came, police knew King was involved in the robbery attempt during a drug deal that when bad, Gmoser said. But less than a month ago, a witness came forward who will testify at trial about what King told him he did on the night Knight was killed.
“Bri Princess was Mychel King,” Gmoser said. “The last person to touch the handle was Mychel King.”
Defense attorney Lawrence Hawkins III told the jury during opening statements that the death of Knight is a “good, old-fashioned whodunit.”
After determining that Knight went to Charles Street for a drug deal, police had several years in which several suspects and leads were pursued, Hawkins said.
“There will be a lot missing in actual evidence on who shot Jaylon Knight, who killed Jaylon Knight,” Hawkins said. “On March 11, 2016, Jaylon Knight went to Charles Street to meet a woman and sell drugs, but the evidence will not show who killed him.”
The trial continues today in Butler County Common Pleas Court.
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