Shell station shooter claims self defense
Jurors deliberated a little more than one hour before returning a guilty verdict on the man who fatally shot another man at the Shell Food Mart in Eatonton last summer.
Lajuan Peire Evans, 25, of Covington, was found guilty of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Brenda H. Trammell sentenced Evans to life in prison plus five years, with the possibility of parole. The fatal shooting took place shortly before 6 p.m. June 4, 2023, at the Shell gas station on East Sumter Street, violently ending a year-long argument between Evans and the victim, Frederick Lamar Scott Jr., of Eatonton.
The trial began immediately after jury selection on Monday, Feb. 19, and ended, Wednesday, Feb. 21.
Evans claimed the shooting was self-defense and emphasized that Scott was wearing brass knuckles at the time, according to defense attorney Barry Hazen, of Atlanta.
Chief Assistant District Attorney Allison T. Mauldin, who prosecuted the case with assistance from A.D.A. Blayne May, said the victim did have brass knuckles, but they were in his hand and not on his knuckles.
Mauldin said Scott and Evans had been threatening each other on social media, talking about fist-fighting each other, and sharing their locations at different times.
Evans was living in Jasper County with his girlfriend at the time, but he grew up in Eatonton and his grandmother still lives on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
On June 4, security video footage at the Shell station reveals Evans drove his grandmother’s car up to the gas pumps, went inside prepaid for $10 worth of gas, got some beer, and went back out and put the gas nozzle in the tank and engaged it.
He noticed some friends on the liquor store side of the building and walked over and talked with them for a very brief time, Mauldin said.
“Then he walked back to his car, and he had his gun out and he was just walking toward his car swinging the gun, which any responsible gun owner isn’t going to be doing,” Mauldin said. “And then you see the victim and he is angry and yelling at him, and he’s walking very stridently towards the defendant, and he has brass knuckles on his hand, actually has them on his fingers, and he starts yelling at the defendant who is just leaning against the car by the nozzle. The gas had finished pumping, but he’s still just leaning there, waiting.”
Mauldin said she has no evidence that the meeting between the two was preplanned. She said the video reveals the defendant arrived first, and after the victim arrived, the confrontation began and the yelling back and forth continued.
“But there’s no sound on the video so we don’t have the full conversation,” she explained. “But essentially the victim wanted to fist fight the defendant and the defendant had a gun.”
Mauldin said Scott put down the brass knuckles, yelled some more, and then picked the brass knuckles back up but didn’t put them on his fingers.
“That happened four times,” she said. “He put the brass knuckles on his fingers, then he intentionally put them down on the pavement, and the last time that he approached the defendant, he had them in his hands, not on his fingers, but in his hands, and they were still hollering at each other.”
That was when Evans shot Scott one time and the bullet struck him in the chest. Scott was later pronounced dead at Putnam General Hospital.
Evans got in his car and sped away and a manhunt ensued. Law enforcement officers of the Eatonton Police Department, and Putnam, Jasper, and Morgan County Sheriff’s Offices went to all the locations that Evans was known to live or visit.
Evans turned himself in the next day, as pre-planned by Sheriff Sills and Hazen, walking into the sheriff’s office accompanied by some family members.
The .40-caliber Glock handgun used in the murder and Evans’ cell phone were never recovered by authorities, according to Mauldin.
“At the bond hearing, the defense promised to surrender the gun, but they never did, so we never got it,” she said.
Besides the security video footage, Mauldin said the prosecution’s key piece of evidence countering the self-defense claim, was witness statements.
A man sitting in a truck parked under the trees at the gas station watched the argument and testified that he could hear what was being said back and forth between the two men.
“And he testified that the defendant said ‘I don’t want to fight you, I want to kill you,’ which was key to his intent,” Mauldin said.
The defense presented a cell phone video that had been posted on social media of the argument, and the person recording the video is heard saying, “He said I don’t want to fight you, I want to shoot you,” which Mauldin said corroborated the witness’ testimony.
The day after the trial, Feb. 22, Evans filed a motion for a new trial, citing insufficient evidence to warrant a conviction and the verdict is contrary to the weight of the evidence, according to court records on the Putnam County Clerk of Courts website.
The motion, submitted for Evans by Hazen, requested a hearing be postponed until the transcripts from the trial had been received and reviewed.