Jury acquits accused gunman nearly 4 years after Wilkinsburg backyard massacre

As a man wept to his attorneys that he’d get to see his kids again, a woman left the Allegheny County Courthouse believing the person who killed hers was walking free.

A jury on Friday acquitted Cheron Shelton of the 2016 mass shooting in Wilkinsburg that killed five adults and an unborn child.

Jessica Shelton lost three children, an unborn grandson and a niece in the shooting.

Neither Jessica Shelton nor any of her slain family members are related to Cheron Shelton.

Shelton, 33, had faced six counts of murder and the death penalty if convicted of the deaths of Jerry Shelton, 35, Brittany Powell, 27, and Chanetta Powell, 25; their cousin, Tina Shelton, 37; family friend Shada Mahone, 26; and Chanetta Powell’s unborn son, Demetrius.

Lamont Powell, John Ellis and Tonjia Cunningham were wounded in the attack.

The jury of six men and six women returned the verdict at about noon after three full days of deliberations.

Shelton’s attorney, Randall McKinney, hugged his client as the foreman read that they’d found him not guilty on all charges. McKinney’s co-counsel, Wendy Williams, said Shelton cried.

“He looked back at his mother and family, who were also crying, and he just said, ‘I’m going to see my boys, I’m going to see my boys.’ He said it over and over. He was sobbing,” Williams said. “He asked me if he was allowed to cry.”

Assistant District Attorney Lisa Pellegrini and Deputy District Attorney Kevin Chernosky quietly declined to have the jury polled.

Neither offered comment. Pellegrini appeared near tears.

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Jurors had been deliberating since Tuesday morning. McKinney said the length of deliberations sent some concern creeping into his confidence.

“As the days dragged on, I started to become concerned about the possibility of a hung jury,” he said.

Family members of the victims had congregated all week on the fourth floor of the courthouse. When they received word the jury had reached a verdict, they gathered together and prayed.

Pellegrini warned them prior to the verdict being read that any emotional outbursts in the courtroom would mean arrest by sheriff’s deputies.

“This is the jury’s verdict,” she told them prior to entering the courtroom to hear the jury’s decision. “Whatever it is, they worked very hard.”

Judge Edward J. Borkowski, who presided over the trial, also warned family members on both sides to contain their emotions. After the verdict was read, family members of the victims cried quietly. Once the judge and jury left the courtroom, they sobbed.

Jessica Shelton lashed out in the hallway after the verdict.

“They set both of them free,” she screamed. “So now he got the chance to kill us all.”

Overcome with emotion, she seemed to blame McKinney, saying that, “When I’m dead,” McKinney is to blame.

District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., in a short written statement, thanked the jurors and friends and family of the victims.

“It is very difficult for the police and my office to investigate and prosecute crimes when the number of witnesses is limited,” he said.

Shelton was initially set to go to trial with a co-defendant, Robert Thomas, who faced the same charges as Shelton. Borkowski — less than an hour before the trial began — dismissed all charges against Thomas days after prosecutors decided not to call their key witness, whose credibility was called into question.

Williams said she thought the dismissal of charges against Thomas played a role in the Shelton verdict.

“I think Mr. Thomas’ case getting dismissed right before trial started was a huge question for the jury,” she said.

McKinney said he believed the jury also had doubts about Wilkinsburg Detective Michael Adams.

Adams was the only prosecution witness placing Shelton at the Franklin Avenue property the night of the shooting. McKinney pointed to inconsistencies in Adams’ testimony from one court proceeding to another and said Adams was lying to bolster the case against Shelton.

Jurors on Wednesday asked to hear that testimony again. In a rare move, Borkowski allowed it.

“It seemed to me that Mr. Shelton was a suspect early on without much evidence to corroborate that, and (investigators) narrowed in and focused on him without following any other leads,” McKinney said. “I think they did that to their detriment.”

Prosecutors rested their case on the sixth day of testimony after calling more than 40 witnesses and introducing more than 600 pieces of evidence. The trial originally was expected to last up to three weeks.

McKinney called one witness: Shelton’s mother, Desdrene Smith.

The prosecution’s theory was that Shelton, believing that Lamont Powell was involved in the 2013 murder of Shelton’s best friend, attacked the party in an act of revenge.

Prosecutors had alleged that Thomas fired from the alley behind the home with a handgun, driving those in the yard toward the back door. They claimed Shelton was waiting in a small walkway between the houses with an AK-47-style rifle and opened fire on the bottleneck at the backdoor.

Investigators zeroed in on Shelton early. On March 12, 2016 — three days after the shooting — they searched his mother’s home in nearby Homewood, where they found ammunition of the same caliber as that found at the crime scene. Testing showed the head-stamps on that ammunition matched the head-stamps on the casings found at the scene.

Police found a .22-caliber rifle along with the ammunition in Shelton’s mother’s home. The gun was previously reported stolen, and Shelton was arrested March 25 for receiving stolen property and a probation violation.

Investigators never recovered the rifle used in the killings, but they claim a letter Shelton sent from jail to his girlfriend’s father contained coded instructions as to where to find the weapon and how to get rid of it. They said he mimed similar instructions to his father days later during a jail visit police secretly recorded.