9-year-old girl describes her mother’s killing

Erica D. Johnson

Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2003 | 9:40 a.m.

A 9-year-old girl told jurors on Monday that she saw Taiwan Allen choke her mother shortly before gunshots rang out from the couple's bedroom.

The girl, who authorities believe was the only witness to Yashoma Clemons' April 14 slaying, also testified that she heard the couple argue in the master bedroom moments before her mother was killed.

She said she witnessed the confrontation through the couple's partially opened bedroom door. Then the voices got louder and the conversation became "more heated," she said.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Vicki Monroe asked the girl what she saw before her mother was killed.

"Shadows," the girl said, lowering her head.

"I saw Taiwan choke my mom. And then I saw Taiwan loading the gun. Then I heard all the booms."

The girl told jurors that Allen, Clemons' live-in boyfriend, remained in the master bedroom for the rest of the night after the shooting.

"He turned off the lights and he kept watching comedy shows," she said.

She said she and her three younger siblings, which included a 15-month-old, took refuge in her bedroom, where they stayed until Allen left the house the next morning.

"We cried and cried until we fell asleep," she said.

Once Allen was gone, the girl said, she went to check on her mother but realized that Allen had locked the bedroom door. Two days after the slaying the 9-year-old used a wire coat hanger to open the lock.

She said she didn't call 911 because she was afraid.

When the girl went into the master bedroom, her mother was lying on the floor near the closet covered in blood, she said.

"She was stone," she said. "She was hard as a rock."

For five days, the girl said, she watched television in the same room where her mother's body lay and occasionally wiped the dead woman's face with a wet washcloth.

"I really wanted her to come back," she said.

The testimony came during the second week of Allen's first-degree murder trial before District Judge Donald Mosley.

Prosecutors claim Allen shot 30-year-old Clemons in a jealous rage at the home the couple shared on Tiffolo Lane near Hollywood Boulevard and Carey Avenue. Clemons' children were in the house with the corpse for five days before they were discovered.

Defense attorney Frederick Santacroce claims the shooting was justifiable homicide and that Allen shot Clemons in self-defense.

But the 9-year-old girl's testimony on Monday helped lay the foundation for the state's theory that jealousy was a possible motive for the killing.

She said she heard Allen and Clemons arguing about her mother's ex-husband, the father of Clemons' three other children, shortly before she heard a series of gunshots ring out.

The girl said Allen became angry when Clemons told him she wanted to get back together with her ex-husband.

"She said she was going to leave (Allen). She didn't want to be with him," she said.

When Allen's sister, Chantal Oloyo, came to the house on April 19, the girl initially lied to her and told her that her mother had gone to the store. She said she was afraid to tell Oloyo the truth.

"I thought (Allen) was probably going to come back," she said. "I didn't want anything to happen to my brothers and sisters."

Santacroce tried to poke holes in the girl's testimony. During his cross-examination of her, he noted that when the girl testified during a preliminary hearing, she did not say she saw Allen choke her mother.

He said the girl also did not previously say she saw Allen load a gun. The girl said she had remembered the other details as she prepared for Monday's testimony.