photo by: Contributed photo, Journal-World file photo

At left is Lei-Ala A. Turner, who was fatally shot shortly after 11 p.m. on Dec. 27 at 2310 W. 26th St., the August Place Apartments in south Lawrence, shown at right.

A jury trial began Wednesday in Douglas County District Court in the case of a man who allegedly shot and killed a close family acquaintance during a small gathering of family and friends.

The state alleges that reckless actions by Willie K. Franklin, 28, of Lawrence, are to blame for the shooting that killed 30-year-old Lei-Ala Turner, also of Lawrence, on Dec. 27, 2017, at her sister’s home at August Place Apartments, 2310 W. 26th St. Franklin is charged with involuntary manslaughter, plus being a felon in possession of a firearm.

“Lei-Ala Turner died because Willie Franklin was messing around with his gun,” prosecutor Amy McGowan said during her opening statement Wednesday afternoon.

Not only that, McGowan said, but Franklin was in a small kitchen in an apartment and pointed his gun directly at Turner’s chest before it went off. McGowan said the medical examiner’s testimony would show that the bullet struck Turner’s left breast and traveled downward through multiple vital organs before exiting near her pelvis.

“It went through her heart,” McGowan said.

McGowan outlined the evening’s events leading up to the shooting, as well as events that followed, culminating in Franklin’s arrest four days later.

photo by: Douglas County Sheriff’s Office

Willie K. Franklin

Franklin’s appointed attorney, Michael Clarke, said in his opening statement that most of that framework won’t be disputed.

However, Clarke said, the evidence that will matter more is what happened that caused the gun to fire — and none of the people testifying actually saw it happen.

“They’re all going to say they did not see the shooting,” Clarke said.

Clarke told jurors that they would repeatedly hear from witnesses that the shooting was an accident, and that evidence won’t prove that Franklin was reckless.

Franklin’s trial is scheduled to run through Friday. He remains in custody on $100,000 bond, but appeared in street clothes for his trial.

According to McGowan’s summary of what occurred:

Franklin is a relative by relationship to Turner; he has a child with a woman who is her cousin. Franklin, Turner and a few other relatives and friends were gathered that night at Turner’s sister’s apartment.

Some in the group were drinking and smoking marijuana, with plans to leave to go to Kansas City later.

When Franklin arrived, he gave his gun — a semi-automatic pistol — to Turner’s sister, who placed it on the top shelf of a closet. When the group began mobilizing to leave for Kansas City, she got the gun back out and put it on the table in the kitchen, where Franklin had been hanging out.

Franklin picked it up, pointing it in the direction of another relative in the process, who told him to point it away from her and show her it was empty.

Franklin then dropped the clip, or magazine, out of the gun and opened the chamber to eject the bullet. Then he “dry fired” it, and no bullet came out.

That relative then saw him put the clip and bullet back in the gun, before she turned away.

A moment later she heard a “pop,” then turned back around to see blood coming from her cousin’s back. Turner grasped onto Franklin before falling to the ground.

Turner’s sister then came in the kitchen and saw the aftermath.

“He’s kneeling next to her, with the gun in his hand, saying ‘I didn’t mean to do it,'” McGowan said.

McGowan said experts would testify that a gun such as the one Franklin was handling required certain pressure to fire, and that there’s not a situation where a gun would fire on its own with no finger on the trigger.

McGowan also said investigators never found a bullet casing, bullet or gun they could prove was from the shooting.

Franklin didn’t stick around afterward, McGowan said.

“He then takes his gun and his Crown Royal and leaves,” McGowan said. “The gun is never recovered, the gun is never found, because the defendant takes the gun out of the apartment that night.”

McGowan said that even though the bullet went all the way through Turner’s body and splintered the kitchen table, investigators were never able to locate it or its casing.

“And they looked,” she said. “They looked everywhere.”

A neighbor in the apartment complex found a casing crusted in ice out in the parking lot a few days later and turned it in to police, McGowan said. A man out jogging at nearby Holcomb Park about a week later found a Taurus 9 mm semi-automatic pistol lying on the ground and called police about it.

Testing of those, however, was inconclusive about whether either was from the fatal shooting, McGowan said.

A warrant was issued for Franklin’s arrest, and at one point he was in contact with relatives who urged him to turn himself in, but he didn’t, McGowan said.

Ultimately, late at night on New Year’s Eve, Lawrence police pulled over a driver they suspected of DUI, McGowan said. The man driving was Franklin, and he was then arrested on the involuntary manslaughter warrant.