[6/13/03]The accused gunman in last year’s shooting death of a Kings man said on the witness stand Thursday that he did the shooting, but it was in self-defense.

Tyrone Jenkins, 29, who is accused of murder in the June 5, 2002, evening shooting death of Dean Johnson, who was 21, told jurors Thursday that Johnson was threatening his life, beginning earlier that day.

“I couldn’t fight back,” Jenkins said of an assault that testimony has indicated Johnson made on him with part of a broken cinder block around midday. “I was faint, and I knew if I put up any resistance, he would kill me.”

Jenkins’ brother Kevin Jenkins, 33, is also accused of murder in the case. The accused driver of the vehicle in which the Jenkinses arrived at and fled the scene of the shooting, around Ford Road, Kevin Jenkins is also accused of having displayed a weapon in keeping at bay approaching witnesses who had been gathered near where the shooting began.

A trial for both began Monday in Warren County Circuit Court. The jury was selected Monday and sequestered on the order of Judge Isadore Patrick. It and a regular audience of about 30 people through Thursday had heard testimony from 21 people.

“You’re pretending to be my friend,” Tyrone Jenkins recalled Johnson saying while the two and four others were gathered at the noon hour around a picnic table on a vacant lot near the end of Ford Road. “When I was in jail, you tried to talk to my girl.” He added that he did not know who Johnson’s girlfriend was.

Jenkins said Johnson hit him once with the block, then stood above him on the table brandishing a beer bottle and repeating “that he would kill me if I said I was his friend again.”

Jimmy Lee Davis, another neighbor who was also at the table, testified that he also heard Johnson assault and threaten Jenkins. “He told him he’d kill him” at least twice, Davis said.

“Isn’t it true that the whole argument is that you tried to buy sex from (Johnson’s) girlfriend?” Assistant District Attorney John Bullard, the state’s prosecutor in the case, later asked Jenkins, who denied the suggestion.

Jenkins said he and Johnson were lifelong acquaintances and were sharing lunch that day. The 10 other residents of the Ford Road subdivision, where the shooting took place, also said they knew both defendants and the victim well from having lived in the same neighborhood.

“I know if (Johnson) made a threat, he intended to carry it out,” Jenkins said, adding that he knew Johnson to be armed at virtually all times. Of those who had testified to witnessing the shooting, Jenkins was the only one to say that Johnson displayed a gun.

Family members of Johnson’s who were gathered then outside a Ford Road home testified Monday that they saw Jenkins exit a sport-utility vehicle driven by Kevin Jenkins and begin shooting at and chasing Johnson south on and off the road. A nurse who lived about 100 yards south testified Wednesday that she saw Jenkins fire the final shot, over her pleas that he was too close to her to shoot. Johnson was shot three times, once lethally, state medical examiner Dr. Stephen Hayne testified.

Jenkins’ version of events differed. “It was a gun battle, sir” he told Bullard. “(Johnson) was shooting; I was shooting; and there were shots fired from behind” he said of the entire chase.

Vicksburg Police found four shell casings at the scene, three near where testimony indicated the shooting began and one a few feet from where Johnson died.

State crime laboratory firearms section chief Steve Byrd also testified Thursday, saying all four casings were ejected from the same firearm, and that the bullet found in Johnson had come from a weapon of the same caliber, 9 mm.

Jenkins denied earlier testimony that he displayed, but did not fire, a gun on a midafternoon drive past Johnson’s location then, which was also near where he said the shooting later began. Witnesses said Johnson ran away then, and Jenkins left.

He also denied speaking with Homer Lenior, a neighbor who had said Jenkins told him after the assault, but before the shooting, that he could not accept the assault from Johnson. “One has got to go,” Lenior had quoted Jenkins as saying.

Bullard also asked Jenkins, “Did you keep repeating to your brother that, Ain’t no man gonna lay hands on me’?”

“I may have said that once or twice,” Jenkins replied.

Jenkins’ recollection of the advice he was given by Vicksburg Police officer Jackie Johnson, to whom he gave a statement following the assault, was also different. Jenkins said he was left with the impression that his signing charges against Johnson was not necessary for the case to be pursued. Johnson had testified that he told Jenkins that Jenkins could pursue the matter by signing charges, but that Jenkins did not indicate whether he planned to do so. Johnson also said police searched the neighborhood for Dean Johnson without success.

And Jenkins recalled being treated after the assault by ambulance personnel at the scene. E-911 director Allen Maxwell testified that records indicated an ambulance responded to the scene but left without locating anyone who needed treatment.

Jenkins is also charged with possessing a firearm as a convicted felon, and admitted to the court before testimony began that he was a convicted felon at the time of the shooting. He further admitted to Bullard Thursday that he knew possessing such a weapon violated the terms of the suspended sentence he was serving.

Tyrone Jenkins has remained in jail since he and his brother turned themselves in to police directly after the shooting. Kevin Jenkins has remained free on bond.

Eugene Perrier, arguing for Kevin Jenkins, has said his client was merely giving Tyrone a ride to their mother’s house nearby when the events unfolded, without Kevin’s prior knowledge. He called three witnesses Thursday who testified that Kevin Jenkins had been working with them that day.

Testimony in the case was expected to conclude today.