An Atlanta man was still in the Fulton County jail Wednesday despite a judge dismissing the main murder charge against him and setting a bond after an extensive hearing.
Atlanta police charged Leonard Knight, 37, with murder following a gunfight in southeast Atlanta that left him wounded and another man dead. Knight had come to his girlfriend’s apartment that he said they had shared and found another man.
The girlfriend told police that she had broken up with Knight and that he didn’t live in the apartment. On Tuesday, the dead man’s father begged Magistrate Karen Woodson not to set a bond.
“This man is a murderer — he unloaded 14 rounds in the house,” Michael Gordon said. “That tells me that he was intent to kill.”
His pleas were unsuccessful. Woodson said the testimony showed Knight merited a $50,000 bond.
Gordon noted the testimony in the afternoon hearing suggested that the Dec. 4 shooting erupted from a squabble over a woman whom 32-year-old Darius Gordon had dated and with whom Knight had lived at the Villages at Carver near the Lakewood Heights neighborhood.
“The defendant was in defense mode, he was looking for trouble,” Gordon said. “My son was trying to avoid it, hoping that the female would be able to defuse the problem.”
But Knight’s lawyer Careton Matthews argued his client had a right to enter the apartment and the evidence suggested self defense more than murder. Knight was wounded and hospitalized with a collapsed lung, Matthews said.
Woodson ruled the testimony didn’t support the malice murder or aggravated assault with a firearm charges.
The judge allowed the case to go forward on a felony-murder charge on the theory that Gordon had died because Knight had committed another felony of possessing a firearm. He had been convicted of a drug charge in the 1990s and it was illegal as a convicted felon for him to own a gun.
The $50,000 bond encompasses the felony murder and other related charges. Upon release Knight is also required to wear an ankle monitor, stay away from the crime scene, and keep a 24-hour curfew except for work.
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