KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — One moment Courtney Styles was watching Netflix in a North Knoxville apartment.
The next she heard gunshots coming from the front room where her boyfriend and his younger brother had been with visitors.
When she went to check on them, she came face to face with a gunman telling her to get back in the room or she'd end up shot, too, authorities say. The brothers, meanwhile, were dying in the room from multiple gunshots.
The visitors fled.
Testimony began Tuesday in Knox County Criminal Court in the trial of James E. Allen, 36, one of two men charged in the killings of Christian Haley, 20, and his brother, Joshua Haley, 19. Gunmen shot them to death about 5:40 p.m. Dec. 29, 2019, in a Rocky Top Apartments unit in North Knoxville near Interstate 640.
Judge Steve Sword is presiding over the trial, expected to continue all week.
Prosecutors Cameron Williams and Danielle Jones contend Allen went into the apartment with underage accomplice Anthony Lua intent, at least at first, on robbing the young men of weed. Lua this summer pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
Defense attorney Gena Lewis, however, argues Allen has been wrongly accused and falsely identified. Or, if he did go to the apartment, it was only to buy marijuana, she said.
As it opened its case Tuesday, the prosecution presented the 911 call that Styles made immediately after the shootings.
Hysterical about what had just happened, Styles in the approximately six-minute call tried to describe the visitors. She said one was a Black male with "messy" dreadlocks and the other was a white male.
Allen and Lua would soon be caught by police running in the Old Broadway area not too far away. Styles, pregnant with Christian Haley's child, would soon deliver the baby.
Jones and Williams say Allen and Lua had plotted with others that night to "hit a lick," or stage a robbery.
Authorities recovered more than two dozen shell casings from the shooting scene. Eight bullets hit Christian Haley; five hit Joshua Haley, Jones told jurors in her opening statement.
In her opening statement, Lewis told jurors to watch for flaws and inconsistencies in what the witnesses told police and how the police went about their investigation.
For example, Styles gave police a faulty description of the gunman she saw in the North Knoxville apartment, Lewis said. Styles thought the gunman had no tattoos; Allen, however, has multiple tattoos on his face, the defense attorney noted.
Allen is no angel, she told jurors.
He has prior felony convictions out of Shelby County, records show. And in 2013, he also was found with a loaded, stolen pistol in Knoxville, records show. It's illegal for felons to carry firearms under the law.
"But that doesn't mean that James is a murderer," she said.
