KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A Knox County jury began hearing testimony Monday in the 2019 killing of a 5-year-old girl where it's not absolutely clear who pulled the trigger.
Robin Howington, 41, is accused in Knox County Criminal Court in the felony murder of her daughter, Destiny Oliver. In addition to felony murder, which alleges a killing committed during the commission of another felony, Howington is also charged with aggravated child neglect, evidence tampering, making a false report and attempted evidence tampering.
Prosecutors Franklin Ammons and Ashley McDermott allege Howington lied and tried to deceive police repeatedly after the child was shot in the chest. She variously blamed a random man, her daughter's father and her 2-year-old son for pulling the trigger.
At the hospital where she learned her daughter had died, she asked a woman in a restroom to get rid of her cellphone, indicative of her deceptive attempts to avoid police scrutiny, Ammons told jurors in his opening statement. Found on the phone were messages about selling narcotics, previous testimony has shown.
Howington's gun was used to kill Destiny, Ammons said, and Howington is the one who tried to hide the gun under a bush outside the house immediately after the shooting.
The mother never took responsibility for what happened, Ammons said.
"She is tossing everything she can out there," he told jurors in his opening statement.
Defense attorney Mike Whalen countered that on the night of the shooting Howington was a shell-shocked mom enduring post-traumatic stress disorder from a prior sexual assault. She was in no rational frame of mind, he told jurors.
"If you were in her position would you be making rational decisions?" Whalen quizzed the jury.
What happened was an accidental shooting -- a "family tragedy" -- involving a 2.5-year-old child, Whalen said, suggesting Howington's young son got the gun and fired a bullet that hit his sister.
Howington had texted as much to an acquaintance after the shooting, lawyers say. When she called 911 to report that a random man had entered her home that night, her young son could be heard in the background, at times crying.
The trial in Judge Scott Green's courtroom is expected to last all week.
Officer Andrell Cummings, the first Knoxville Police Department officer on the scene, testified Monday afternoon he wasn't sure what he'd find inside the home when he arrived. He'd been dispatched on a shots fired call.
Inside the quiet home, he found Howington sitting calmly on the couch talking to someone on the phone. She pointed toward her daughter's body nearby when Cummings asked who'd been shot, he testified.
When the officer saw the badly wounded child, he scooped her up in his arms and took her outside to assess her condition and wait on an ambulance. By the time he'd determined she was lifeless, emergency medical personnel arrived.
Cummings testified officers checked neighbors to see if they had any security video that would yield clues of what had happened in the house. One neighbor had a camera that showed people coming and going from the Howington home in the minutes before the homicide.
It also appeared to show someone step outside and walk around to the side just moments before Howington called 911. When officers checked around that side of the house, they found the weapon that had been used in the killing, hiding under a bush.
