On Oct. 8, 2013, Terri Chimon Williams walked into the law office of W. Scott Smith with a bag and a handgun.
“I just killed somebody,” she said.
On Monday night, not quite two years later, Williams walked out of the DeKalb County jail a free woman.
Her story was the same, but her words were a little different.
“It just feels good to be vindicated,” she said.
Some 10 hours before her release, a DeKalb jury found Williams not guilty on all seven felony counts filed against her following the shooting death of Charlese Brooks, including malice murder and two counts of felony murder. Smith said the jury agreed with his contentions that Williams killed Brooks — a 35-year-old mother of 10 children — in self-defense following an argument outside East Atlanta's Brick House Restaurant.
A spokesman for the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office confirmed the verdict.
Initial reports following the shooting suggested that Brooks was killed that night while trying to break up a fight between her friend and Williams. After the duo was separated, Williams retrieved a gun and opened fire, Brooks' family claimed at the time.
“The peacemakers are always the victims,” Brooks’ aunt, Charleen Dennis, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the day after the shooting.
Williams and her attorney maintained all along, however, that Brooks was the one who triggered the shooting.
Smith told The AJC on Monday that his client had indeed gone to the restaurant on Bouldercrest Road to confront a woman who had been “talking smack about her,” but the attorney said it was Williams who was attempting to leave the scene when Brooks pulled out a handgun. Williams had her own gun — the same one she would later take to Smith’s office — and shot first, Smith said.
“It was self-defense,” Smith said. “My client saw a gun.”
No gun was found on Brooks’ body, but Smith said he believes that a handgun later discovered in Brooks’ car, which was at the scene, had her blood on it. The gun was never DNA tested, Smith said, but “nobody else was injured on the scene.”
“It has to be Charlese Brooks’ blood,” Smith said.
At least two of Brooks’ friends were present during the shooting, according to previously obtained documents. One of them, Smith said, initially testified during trial that she had not touched the gun — before taking the stand again and claiming that she had grabbed the gun after attempting to give Brooks CPR, thus transferring the blood to the weapon.
Asked Monday night if Brooks did in fact have a gun that night, Williams said yes. She said her heart went out to Brooks’ family and, when asked what she was going to do when she got home to her own kin, she said she didn’t have any specifics plans.
“Eat, I guess,” she said.
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