A jury acquitted an East Chicago man Thursday in a couple’s 2021 murder.
Gary Shanklin, 23, was charged in the Oct. 13, 2021 deaths of Nalisha D. Martin, 43, of Hammond, and Christopher Burks, 52, of Chicago.
“The jury saw that the prosecutors and none of their witnesses (could show) how this confrontation started and who fired the first shot,” defense lawyer Brandon Hicks said after the verdict.
“Nobody could tell the sequence of events,” he said.
In closing arguments, Deputy Prosecutor Keith Anderson played a video of a man fleeing the scene, running between houses, then down another street.
Shanklin could not claim self-defense, he said. When police got to him, he “lied” to the cops when he denied any involvement in the shooting, the prosecutor said.
“I didn’t shoot anyone, I never owned a gun,” Anderson said, quoting Shanklin.
Another issue was Martin was found shot in the back “execution-style,” the prosecutor said. Self-defense was only a legal strategy developed for the trial, Anderson said.
There were two guns belonging to Shanklin and Hicks, and three victims, including Martin. Martin was shot first, then Burks shot Shanklin back, before he was killed, he argued.
Shanklin “lured” the couple to an East Chicago alley where there were no cameras and ended up killing them while getting shot himself, he said.
Hicks argued the couple “came to his neighborhood.”
Every single police or CSI official said they didn’t know how it started, the lawyer argued.
When Hicks asked the detective who shot first, he said there was “no way I can tell,” he told jurors.
“Defending yourself does not justify killing everyone at the scene,” Anderson later retorted, adding Shanklin killed them for “no good reason.”
As Martin was shot in the back, there was “no way that is self-defense,” he said.
East Chicago Police were called at 12:29 p.m. Oct. 13, 2021 to the 1200 block of West 149th Street where a silver Chevrolet Impala hit a house.
They found Martin shot in the car, while Burks was lying across the street in a nearby alley, charges state. The passenger side window was shattered, with a bullet casing found on the seat inside.
Burks was wounded in the right shoulder, while Martin was shot twice, once in the “front” and in her back. Both were transported to St. Catherine Hospital in East Chicago. Burks died there, while Martin was airlifted to a Chicago trauma hospital where she died shortly thereafter.
Minutes after the call, Shanklin was reported shot in the shoulder down the street on the 4800 block of Walsh Avenue, near his home, police said.
At the hospital, Shanklin claimed to detectives he was walking to a gas station near his house when he heard gunshots and ran, then noticed he was shot.
When police were about to perform a gun residue test on his hands, he told them he wanted to wash some blood off his hands. He was told that wouldn’t affect the test.
“I didn’t shoot nobody, I don’t own a firearm,” he said suddenly, according to court documents.
The test came back positive and there were fresh cuts on his hands, detectives wrote. Shanklin said he fell on gravel trying to escape, documents said.
“I don’t even own a gun,” he said.