One man is headed to trial in a 2018 East Chicago shooting, while the other co-defendant inked a plea deal Thursday.
Mark Harrison III, 29, pleaded guilty to aggravated battery. His sentencing date is Jan. 2 before Judge Natalie Bokota.
Co-defendant Larcel Lockhart, 27, was rejecting an offered plea deal, lawyer Lakeisha Murdaugh told Bokota.
She got “exculpatory evidence” around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday that may show he wasn’t there. His trial date is set for Nov. 18.
It’s “something I need to explore,” she told the judge.
Charges were dropped against a third man, Marzell Walden Jr., in 2018.
Deputy Prosecutor Lindsey Lanham is assigned, while lawyer John Cantrell is representing Harrison.
Officers responded around 10 a.m. April 1, 2018 to the 3400 block of Guthrie Street for a report of 15 to 20 shots fired, according to a probable cause affidavit.
A woman was sitting in a car with her boyfriend outside her apartment complex on Guthrie Street when they “heard a loud bang” and saw the “front passenger side window shatter,” followed by gunfire, the affidavit stated.
The woman said she had seen a man walk from one side of a building to another which she said she found “strange, because nobody lived on the side of the building where the man came from,” according to the affidavit.
The woman was shot in her upper right back and was taken to St. Catherine Hospital, court records state. She had spinal and rib fractures, causing “difficulty with her lower right extremities,” the affidavit stated.
At the scene, officers found 32 spent shell casings from two different caliber weapons, according to the affidavit.
Surveillance footage showed two men walking behind the apartments and “pulling out handguns and firing them at a vehicle” before returning to a vehicle that had dropped them off, the affidavit stated.
Lockhart had an ankle monitor on at the time that showed he was in the area of the shooting that day, according to the affidavit.
Post-Tribune archives contributed.
