Witness IDs suspects in killing of Candy Lady

Kim Smith

Thursday, Dec. 14, 2000 | 10:31 a.m.

Every day Flora Johnson would delight the children in her neighborhood by selling candy, pop and ice cream through her kitchen window.

On Wednesday one those children went on trial for killing the crippled and half-blind 86-year-old and her husband, Azel Evans, 71, on Sept. 23, 1998.

Shauntay Wheaton had just celebrated his 15th birthday when, prosecutors allege, he and Deangelo Mitchell, 16, went to the "Candy Lady's" home on Blankenship Avenue with the intention of robbing her.

Instead, Chief Deputy District Attorney L.J. O'Neale told jurors, Wheaton ended up shooting Johnson once and Evans four times, killing them both.

Both boys were arrested within minutes of the slayings, and Wheaton gave police a half-dozen stories before admitting he had been at the Johnson home, O'Neale said.

Moments later, when he was being fingerprinted, more of the story became clear.

O'Neale said Wheaton asked a corrections officer if he was in trouble. When she replied yes, he began to cry and told her "I'm the shooter."

Surprised, the officer asked him if he knew what he was telling her, O'Neale said.

Wheaton's answer: "I didn't want them to tell on me so I shot them."

O'Neale said that in addition to Wheaton's statements, jurors will also hear that his bloody footprints were found in the home along with one of his fingerprints.

Defense attorney Chip Siegel told jurors it was Mitchell, whose trial is scheduled back-to-back with Wheaton's, who committed the slayings.

Wheaton was merely present and was ordered to do certain things, Siegel said.

As far as his statement to the police, Siegel told jurors it was coerced to a certain extent. Despite Wheaton's youth, his mother was never called, and the detective pursued his interrogation even after the boy tried to invoke his right to remain silent, Siegel said.

"The last thing he said when he was done chewing him up and spitting him out was, 'We're going to treat you like a man,' " Siegel said.

The prosecutors' first witnesses were Alfreda Russell and Frances Wessley.

Russell, Johnson's niece and next-door neighbor, testified she heard at least three gunshots shortly after 9 a.m. on the day of the slayings. She called her aunt to see if she, too, heard the gunshots, but got no answer.

Concerned, Russell said she called Wessley, then went to her house, across the street. They tried again to call Johnson and, after failing, called the police.

Wessley told jurors that between Russell's phone call and visit, she saw two young men come out of Johnson's home. She later identified Wheaton and Mitchell as the boys.