NORFOLK, Va. — A mass shooting in Norfolk's Young Terrace neighborhood in Nov. 2021 left three women dead and two others injured. The accused, Ziontay Palmer, is now standing trial. Survivors and victim's family members testified before an emotionally charged courtroom Wednesday.
Angel Legrande was 19 years old at the time of the shooting. She was pregnant. And she said Ziontay Palmer shot her in the shoulder.
"He just runs out of the car and shoots me," Legrande testified.
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Man accused of killing 3, injuring 2 others in Norfolk mass shooting on trial
She said Palmer, then 19, was her baby's father and the couple had argued the day before. She said she told Palmer he "didn't have to stay [in his child's life]" since she had her mother's support. The next day, she said, he opened fire.
The scene, she said, only got worse.
"I looked over and seen my mom laying there," she said. Legrande described running to her step mom for help.
Legrande's mother Nicole Lovewine and step mother Detra Brown both died in the shooting. The autopsy reports reveal Lovewine was shot once in the head and once in the top of the chest and Brown was shot twice in the head and four more times in her body.
"I'll never forget it," testified neighbor and survivor Shazelle Dixon.
Dixon said the shooting happened around dinner time when her four kids, and other kids from the neighborhood, were playing outside on a trampoline. When gunshots rang out, she said, she ran outside towards where the children played.
That's when, she said, she saw her neighbor and friend Sarah Costine.
"I saw Sarah on one of the victim's trying to help her," testified Dixon.
She said she turned towards Costine and saw a man running in the same direction.
"I thought he was coming to help her. I didn't realize the shooter was still in the area," Dixon explained.
The man, Dixon said, said something inaudible to Costine before he shot her. The autopsy report reveals Costine died when the bullet struck her in the chest.
Dixon said the shooter then turned towards her as she backed up behind several trashcans. "He walked around the trashcans and raised the gun up," she showed the jury the position of the gunman. "That's when he shot me in the face," she said.
Costine's teenage son testified he had been playing on the trampoline when the gunshots rang out. He said he saw a man in a dark hoodie running from the scene.
Dixon said after a two-week stay in the hospital she identified the shooter out of the police's photo line up. "I'll never forget his face," she said. "He was a dead person in the eyes and the soul."
Wednesday, she identified Palmer in the courtroom as the shooter "with the same dead look on his face."
Meanwhile, defense attorney Eric Korslund questioned how Dixon could remember the face of a man she'd never met weeks and years after the crime. And he questioned whether Dixon's selection of Palmer's photo out of a photo line up could have been inadvertently influenced by police opinion.
Dixon didn't know Palmer before the shooting, but Legrande did. And Legrande said she spoke with Palmer regularly after the incident.
Legrande testified that these conversations "always" included talk about what happened because she "wanted answers."
Prosecutors showed the jury a video recording of one call between Palmer and Legrande from roughly one month after the shooting. In that call Palmer can be heard saying "you don't think I lost sleep about that? I started praying every day. Nothing was right about it," as well as "I told you I apologized."
The conversation, while difficult to understand in places, appeared to be in regard to the shootings.
"Did you [have these conversations] in order to use this at trial?" defense attorney Korslund pressed Legrande.
"Yes. He took my mom away from me," responded Legrande.
Korslund contended his client is innocent since poor police work led to assumptions and misidentification. He said there's no scientific evidence, like DNA or fingerprints, linking Palmer to the tragic crimes.
The trial is scheduled to last through Friday.
