At 12:01 p.m. on April 14, 2019, 28-year-old Derrick Nichols was shot to death on Pavilion Street in the Clay-Arsenal neighborhood of Hartford, Connecticut.
Sheleese Lockhart told police that she witnessed the shooting. She said she left her house just before noon to walk to a nearby market and saw Nichols, whom she recognized from the neighborhood, walking in the other direction. She said that after she left the store, she heard a noise that sounded like fireworks from a blue Acura parked at the corner of Wooster and Pavilion streets.
Lockhart said she saw Nichols exit the Acura from the passenger side and spin around while reaching for a gun. She said the driver of the Acura shot Nichols again, then sped east, toward Main Street.
At the crime scene, the police found several items belonging to Nichols, including a fully loaded 9 mm gun, cash, two cellphones, and a tube containing what appeared to be crack cocaine. About 100-133 feet from the intersection of Wooster and Pavilion, police also found three shell casings and a bullet.
Nichols’s Honda Pilot was parked 99 feet from the intersection. The police saw a bullet hole in the driver’s side window, and what appeared to be blood on the vehicle’s exterior. They also found a bullet inside the Pilot.
Police put out a bulletin for the blue Acura, which Lockhart described as two-door, with a spoiler, and a yellow plate taped to the back window.
At 12:35 p.m., an officer spotted a car matching that description at a traffic light about two miles away. Sharell Adams was driving the car, which she said was owned by 37-year-old Osafa Williams. She also said he was at a nearby apartment. As the police waited for a tow truck to impound the car, Williams showed up and asked what was going on. An officer told him that the car matched the description of a car leaving a shooting. Williams said he had been near Wooster and Pavilion streets and heard the gunshots.
Later that day, in a videotaped interview at the police station, Williams again said he had been sitting in the Acura near Pavilion and Wooster at the time of the murder. He said he sped away when he heard the shots because he was afraid, not because he was involved.
Also at the police station, an officer swabbed Williams’s hands and clothes for gunshot residue (GSR). Eight days later, the police also performed GSR testing on the interior and exterior of the Acura for gunshot residue. Gunshot residue is made up of three elements fused together: lead, barium, and antimony.
None of the tested samples contained all three elements, although some samples from Williams’s hands and clothing, as well as from the car, contained one or two of the elements.
Police arrested Williams on October 11, 2019, and charged him with murder and criminal possession of a firearm.
His jury trial in Hartford County Superior Court, presided over by Judge Carl Schuman, began in October 2022.
In a pre-trial motion, Williams sought to exclude evidence about the GSR test results, arguing that the results didn’t show GSR. His attorney, Kirsten Coffin, acknowledged that the presence of one or two of the contributing elements might have some relevance but also could mislead the jury and prejudice Williams. The state argued that it would make clear to the jury that the results didn’t indicate GSR but rather “were consistent” with GSR. Judge Schuman allowed the state to present evidence that the GSR testing had reported particles of lead in Williams’s jeans, barium and antimony in Williams’s sweatshirt, lead and antimony in the passenger headliner of the Acura, and barium and antimony in the driver’s side headliner.
During the investigation, the police had also recovered a surveillance video, taken from a camera about 100 yards east of the Wooster-Pavilion intersection. Although grainy, the video showed Williams getting into his Acura and then Nichols walking past, although never entering, the Acura on the way to his Pilot before falling to the ground.
Also prior to trial, Coffin told Judge Schuman that she wanted to introduce testimony by Erik Eichler, an investigator with an expertise in measurement and video analysis. The state opposed the request, arguing that the jury did not need an expert to make sense of the video. Both sides agreed that Williams and Nichols were in the video, and the state said that Eichler, who had met Williams only a handful of times, was not needed to identify him on the video.
Judge Schuman asked Coffin about what Eichler would testify to. She said: “Observations as to—he sees the cars, he sees my client getting into the blue car, and he sees the victim walking down the street. And he sees . . . the victim falling.”
Judge Schuman barred Eichler from testifying about the video. “Now, it’s true that the witness here is characterized as an expert rather than a layperson, but in terms of identifying these individuals, I don’t believe that he has any special expertise other than having met the defendant three times in jail and obviously, seeing him here,” he said. “But that’s not really expertise.”
Lockhart testified about the shooting and seeing Nichols leave Williams’s Acura after the first shot rang out. She now said that she saw a flash of light from inside the Acura. That detail was missing from her statement to police, but Lockhart said she had mentioned this in her interview and because of the trauma she suffered witnessing the shooting, she overlooked the omission when she signed the statement.
Adams testified that Williams left the apartment they shared at 10 a.m. on the day of the shooting and returned at 12:11 p.m. She said that Williams did not tell her where he was going when he left or where he had been when he returned. She testified that she asked Williams to give her a ride to the salon. She said he refused, without offering an explanation, but allowed her to borrow the Acura.
A medical examiner testified that Nichols was shot four times: in the right and left arm, in the chest and in the back.
Although the Acura had been parked near the corner of Wooster and Pavilion, the police found shell casings behind the Pilot, which was 99 feet from the corner.
Detective Matthew Larrivee, who processed the crime scene, testified that shell casings didn’t always remain where they were ejected.
“As soon as a spent shell casing lands on a hard roadway, they don’t just land and stop. They could—for more or less better terms—they could tumble. They could move on the ground. They won’t just land and stop where they are.” He said that foot traffic or a motor vehicle could also move a shell casing.
Allison Gingel, a chemist with the Connecticut Forensic Science Laboratory, testified about the GSR testing. She said that if the testing shows the presence of all three elements—lead, barium, and antimony—it is classified as “characteristic of” GSR. When only two elements are present, “It’s kind of like a cone, and it opens up so there’s more sources because you would have a conclusion that says that you’re consistent with elements of primer gunshot residue.”
James Gannalo, a former police officer in New York City and consultant on weapons identification and operability, testified for the defense that if only two of the elements are present, the particle in question cannot be considered gunshot residue.”
During cross-examination, Gannalo said he did not have a degree in chemistry or forensics and had never performed a GSR test.
The state also introduced the video of Williams’s statement to the police. It introduced a clip of the surveillance video showing the Acura speeding away from but not the events at the actual moment of the shooting.
Eichler testified about the geography of the crime scene, an attempt by the defense to show that the location of the physical evidence didn’t line up with Lockhart’s testimony about the shooting. The shell casings and the evidence collected near or from the Pilot, he said, suggested a shooter other than Williams.
During closing argument, Coffin said Lockhart’s testimony was at odds with the evidence. “As the state said, ‘Corroboration.’ You look at the physical evidence, she talks about the blue car being near the corner—parked near the corner of Wooster and Pavilion. But all the physical evidence, the victim’s gun ... [t]hat was found down the street near 18 Pavilion Street .... Also, the four [shell casings] were found at 18 Pavilion Street, as well as [the victim’s] clothes and ... his other belongings. All 100 feet down the street. That’s a pretty good distance. Also, the Honda Pilot ... which had a bullet hole in the window. A [bullet] found in the seat and some blood on the Honda Pilot. This is all down near 18 Pavilion [Street]. ... Again, you're the judges of [Lockhart’s] credibility.”
In its closing argument, the state noted the proximity of Nichols’s gun to where Lockhart said Williams had parked the Acura. The prosecutor also urged the jury to watch the portion of the video submitted into evidence. “Look at the other vehicles on that street. Watch the way they’re driving when the shooting just occurred and watch the way [Williams is] driving. Nobody else was driving the way he [was] driving, passing vehicles on the wrong side of the road.
The jury convicted Williams of murder and criminal possession of a firearm on October 12, 2022. Judge Schuman later sentenced Williams to 55 years in prison.
Williams appealed his conviction. He argued that there had been insufficient evidence to sustain the jury’s verdict, and that Judge Schuman had erred in allowing the state to present the GSR evidence and barring him from presenting expert testimony about the video.
The motion said Eichler’s testimony wasn’t about identifying Nichols and Williams. It was about what the men were doing at the time of the shooting. Although Lockhart said Nichols was first shot inside the Acura, the video told a different story; Nichols never went into the Acura, and he appeared to have been shot when he was already well past Williams’s car, which lined up more favorably with the physical evidence, the motion said.
“The blood on the exterior of Nichols’s Honda, the bullet hole in its window, and the bullet found inside the Honda make Lockhart’s account impossible,” the motion said. “The evidence was clear that the Honda was parked further down Pavilion behind the Acura. It is impossible for Williams to have made these shots from the Acura, especially without creating a bullet hole in the Acura.”
On August 13, 2024, the Connecticut Supreme Court granted Williams a new trial. The court said that Judge Schuman had applied incorrect case law in barring Eichler’s testimony about the video. The issue, the court said, wasn’t about identity, it was about challenging Lockhart’s credibility as a witness. “Eichler’s testimony, if admitted, would have challenged her version of events,” the court said. “According to Eichler, the victim can be seen in the street camera footage walking on Pavilion Street when he was shot. This directly contradicts Lockhart's testimony that the victim was sitting in the Acura when he was first shot. It simply cannot be said, therefore, that testimony potentially discrediting the state’s entire theory of the case would have had no effect on the outcome of the trial.”
The ruling also said that the state had presented sufficient evidence to sustain the conviction, and that Judge Schuman had ruled properly in allowing the GSR evidence to be used at trial.
After the ruling, Williams remained in custody. Represented by Abigail Mason and Vishal Garg, he was acquitted at a retrial on July 25, 2025, and released that day.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 09-08-2025
