A jury trial continued Tuesday for Chase Simmons, the person charged with the 2019 murder of Amarius Winstead and Jasper Brown III as well as assault for the non-fatal shooting of Tyler Glover. Day two included testimony from Glover, as well as two individuals implicating Simmons with their accounts of events — though portions of those two testimonies were contradictory.
Brief recaps from each testimony on day two can be found below. For a recap from the first day of the trial, click here. The trial will resume Wednesday.
Quick facts of the case
A party took place at 8221 Crisp Road starting the evening of May 31, 2019. A shooting took place around 12:30 a.m. on June 1. Simmons, 17 at the time, was arrested on June 6, and he was charged with the murder of 16-year-old Winstead and 19-year-old Brown. Simmons was also charged with second-degree assault because Glover, 19 at the time, was also shot one time but recovered from his injuries.
Daviess County Commonwealth’s Attorney Bruce Kuegel is prosecuting the case along with Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Kristin Whitney. Simmons is represented by Patrick Flaherty and Bryce Caldwell.
Testimony from Andrew Pierce
Pierce gave a lengthy and detailed account of what transpired the night of the shooting — including saying he saw Simmons with a gun immediately after the incident, and that they went to the location where the murder weapon was ultimately found — although portions of his testimony were contradicted later by another witness.
His testimony was also scrutinized by the defense team due to it coming after a “proffer” from the prosecution and, they said, because Pierce might only be trying to keep himself out of trouble. The defense team also focused on the fact Pierce admitted to smoking marijuana before the party and at the residence they went to after the party.
Before discussing the proffer and his understanding of the agreement, Pierce gave his version of what happened that night.
Pierce said he got off work at 9 p.m. then went to the Simmons’ household in eastern Daviess County. Pierce said Chase and his brother Andrew Simmons were there, as was Matthew Hale. (Note: Hale testified Monday that he was at the Simmons’ house prior to going to the party. He said he remembered seeing Pierce there at “1ish” but doesn’t remember seeing Chase Simmons.)
Pierce said he only had plans to stay at the house for an hour or less, but he got hungry and went to eat with Chase Simmons around 10 p.m. He said when they returned to the house around 11 p.m., Andrew Simmons and Hale were leaving to go to the party.
Roughly 30 minutes later, Pierce said, Chase Simmons said his brother called from the party saying he was sick. Pierce agreed to take Simmons to the party. Pierce said he didn’t know the location, but Simmons had it pulled up on his phone and gave him directions.
Pierce said they had a normal conversation during the drive, which took 20-30 minutes. He parked behind the pole barn where most of the people at the party were hanging out.
Pierce said Simmons asked him to wait for just a few minutes and he agreed. He said 2-5 minutes later, he heard gunshots. At that point he “decided it was best for me to just leave.” He said as he was getting ready to leave, Simmons got back to the car and “started telling me to go.” Later during testimony, Pierce said Simmons was saying “go, go, go, go” quickly.
Later in his testimony, Pierce said Simmons was wearing a black hooded jacket and pants. He said the hood was down when Simmons left the car but was up when he returned. (Multiple testimonies described the shooter wearing a black hoodie.)
During the drive back, Simmons said he needed to go somewhere other than his own house but didn’t give a reason why, according to Pierce. He then said he saw Simmons had a gun and pulled the clip out, and that there were only a couple bullets left in the clip.
“That’s how I realized right then what was actually happening,” Pierce said.
Pierce said the gun was a black handgun “like what the police carry,” specifically saying it looked like a Glock. He said he knew there were only a couple bullets left because the magazine was transparent. He claimed he could see everything because he had two screens in his car that were providing enough light.
Pierce said he then realized he needed gas. However, he passed one gas station because there were several police officers filling up their tanks “so I decided it would be best to not stop there.” He instead got gas at a Valero nearby.
Pierce said he and Simmons weren’t talking much because Simmons was making calls and looking for a place to stay.
“He said he couldn’t go home, he got in some shit, and he needed somewhere to stay for a minute,” Pierce said of Simmons.
Around that time, Simmons asked Pierce to take him to a trailer park in Browns Valley. Pierce said he didn’t know what was going on, and that Simmons never explicitly said he shot the gun but Pierce also didn’t ask. Pierce said Anthony Simmons met them at the trailer.
Pierce testified that the owner was inside the residence when they arrived. Many of the details Pierce went on to describe while inside the trailer were later contradicted by the owner, later identified as April Rednour. (Note: Both Pierce and Rednour said they did not know each other.)
According to Pierce, Rednour was listening to a police scanner, and it could be heard that three people had been shot. Pierce said “that’s when Chase started kind of freaking out” and acting “sporadic.”
Pierce claimed he saw the handgun placed in a Ziploc bag, which was then placed on the counter inside the trailer. He said that’s the last place he saw it.
Pierce said Rednour’s daughter was at the trailer and that he briefly saw her. He said he recognized her from school but had never talked to her, and that she had on an Apollo High School T-shirt.
Pierce said he was at the trailer an hour or less, then he left alone and assumed Chase Simmons was staying there that night.
Pierce did not tell any of the above information to detectives or anyone else prior to April 2022. He said following the shooting, he got an attorney on his own, and he was advised not to talk to anyone.
On Monday, Kugel noted that one of the big breaks in the case was when Pierce accepted a “proffer.” The prosecution approached Pierce’s attorney with the “proffer” that in exchange for Pierce’s testimony, they wouldn’t press charges for hindering apprehension of Simmons. That led to Pierce’s testimony.
Upon being asked his understanding of the proffer, Pierce first said that his role was to tell the prosecution what they “want to know” but clarified he meant it was to tell the truth. He added that it was his understanding that in exchange, he would not be charged with “anything.”
Pierce said his attorney read the proffer to him and said it was his “only option,” at which point Pierce gave a statement.
During cross examination, Caldwell focused on the timeline of events, the use of marijuana, and why Pierce didn’t provide a statement for nearly 3 years.
Caldwell indicated that according to Pierce’s estimations, he and Simmons would have left the party before the shooting occurred. (Note: Pierce often said he couldn’t remember the exact time frame everything happened. He was asked numerous questions about when specific events happened and the amount of time between those events, and his estimates could place him arriving at the party anywhere from just after midnight to nearly 12:30 a.m.)
Pierce said during the drive back he was worried. He said he didn’t know if anyone had been shot, but “it wasn’t a surprise” when he found out because so many shots were fired and so many people were in the area. He said he didn’t know any of the victims prior to the shooting.
Caldwell asked if Pierce felt “pretty desperate” to get back to Owensboro and he said yes.
Pierce then said he and Simmons smoked marijuana earlier that night. Caldwell asked if that could have made an impact on Pierce’s recollection of events, but Pierce said he had smoked weed “pretty commonly” for a couple of years at that point and “it’s not like it makes me so high that I just can’t remember anything.”
Pierce again said he didn’t stop at the gas station where police were because “I just didn’t feel like it would be in my best interest” because he was worried he would be in trouble too.
Pierce said he didn’t ask Simmons what happened because “I felt like the less I knew, the better.”
Caldwell asked if Pierce was testifying in order to “satisfy” the prosecution but he said “I was coming here to tell what I know.
Testimony from Tyler Glover
Glover was 19 at the time of the incident. He said he was at a party with friends, including Winstead and Brown. He said he wasn’t sure how they found out about the party, but he rode there with a friend and arrived between 11 p.m. and midnight.
Glover said he was initially inside the pole barn, but went outside to smoke marijuna. He said the shots went off soon after that.
Glover said he was facing the pole barn when the shots were fired, and that Winstead and Brown were standing a couple feet away facing him. He said based on where he was hit by a bullet, the shooter was somewhere to Glover’s right and in front of him, but he didn’t see the shooter or any muzzle flashes.
Glover was shot below the stomach in the waist area. He said he didn’t know who else had been shot until he sat down on a bench shortly after he was shot. That’s when he saw Winstead on the ground, but Brown’s body had already been taken away.
Glover said he saw Andrew Simmons at the party and they said hi to one another but didn’t have a conversation. Glover said he did not know Hale.
Testimony from April Rednour
(Note: Rednour was interviewed for the first time in the case last week, and had not given a statement prior to that.)
Rednour said she got a phone call or text — she couldn’t remember which — from Chase Simmons saying he was on his way to her house. She said it was late but she was unsure of the time.
She said Simmons and Pierce were talking about the shooting when they were inside her residence. She said she doesn’t own a police scanner (contrary to Pierce’s testimony) and that she found out about the shooting from them.
Rednour testified that Simmons said he “shot the opps,” later saying to this day she doesn’t know what that phrase means or if it was a potential gang reference. (Note: It’s unclear if it should be spelled “ops” or “opps” but was pronounced like “special ops.”)
Rednour said she knew someone had been shot but did not find out anyone died until it was in the news later. She later said both Simmons and Pierce were “bouncing off the wall” and “hyper” but that Pierce was the calmer of the two. She later said they were “intense” and seemed under the influence of something.
Rednour said Andew Simmons showed up 20-30 minutes later unannounced and had a long rifle. She said that was concerning and she told everyone to leave, but she did not ask why he had the gun or if it was loaded. Rednour said she had known the Simmons brothers for several years but did not know Pierce.
Rednour later said everyone was there another 15 minutes or so, also admitting that they all smoked some marijuana after all three boys were inside the residence. The defense team pressed Rednour about the marijuana, asking why they would have smoked together if she asked the boys to leave as well as if that would affect her interpretation of what happened that night.
Rednour’s answers were a bit jumbled, but said the boys weren’t really listening to her at first because they were talking to each other and on the phone. She said smoking could potentially have affected her memory but not her decision making.
Rednour said her daughter was not there, and that she also said she never saw a handgun (contradicting Peirce’s testimony).
Rednour said Chase Simmons left his backpack at her house. She said she never looked inside but put it in her shed. She said Simmons returned a couple days later to retrieve the backpack and left immediately after.
The day after Simmons was arrested, police officers retrieved a gun from her neighbor’s shed — located only 3-5 feet from her residence — according to Rednour.
However, Rednour said she was never questioned by police and she did not give a statement until June 9, 2022. Rednour told the defense team that she never volunteered information because she saw Simmons was already a suspect so she didn’t think she had anything useful to add.
Testimony about medical records and autopsy reports
Multiple witnesses testified about the medical records and autopsy reports for the victims.
John Thayer, Deputy Coroner for Daviess County, said he received a call to Owensboro Health’s emergency room to attend to the victims early on the morning of June 1, 2019. He said when he arrived at the scene, Brown had already been pronounced dead.
Thayer observed “several small-caliber injuries” on Brown and two infusion lines — one for drugs to go into the body and another to remove blood. At that point, he decided it would be appropriate for Brown’s body to go back to the medical examiner’s office.
Jennifer Raque, surgeon at Owensboro Health Regional Hospital, said that she operated on Winstead first, as Brown was already receiving treatment. According to Raque, Winstead received CPR prior to arriving at the hospital. From there, Raque said she “attended to him until the point that care was deemed futile.”
“Then I moved to the next patient [Glover] who was less severely injured,” Raque said.
Raque said there was a single gunshot wound to both Glover’s and Winstead’s abdomens. Death certificates show that Brown was pronounced dead at 12:58 a.m. while Winstead was pronounced dead at 1:21 a.m.
When attending to Glover, Raque said they were able to perform a diagnostic laparoscopy, which is a surgery done to confirm if a projectile is in a patient’s body or not. They were able to remove the projectile from Glover’s abdomen and ruled he had no further injury to his abdomen.
“I had determined that there was no injury to any major blood vessels. It didn’t come close to blood vessels and certainly had not entered any of them. It did injure his left hip bone, but at that point, it was no longer deemed life-threatening, he was able to leave the hospital,” Raque said.
An x-ray then showed a single entry wound near Glover’s hip bone and revealed a location of another projectile; however, Raque said it was not removed because the projectiles typically do not cause harm if left in place.
The bullet is still in Glover’s hip and is marked as the 9th of the 10 bullets fired during the shooting.
Autopsies were ordered for the bodies of Brown and Winstead. Medical Examiner Christoper Kiefer testified about the process of the autopsy.
Kiefer recalled that Brown’s body had 13 gunshot wounds, but that only a few were immediately fatal. Several of the entry wounds also had exit wounds that Kiefer was able to identify, but several did not have exit wounds meaning projectiles were still in the body.
“Only two of them would I declare immediately fatal, some of them passed through, like the upper arms or a couple biceps,” Kiefer said.
Kiefer said they were not able to determine which projectile specifically caused Brown’s death. He said Winstead’s death was due to internal bleeding from the wound to his abdomen.
Testimony from law enforcement about the investigation
After all three victims had been ushered off the premises of the scene, the Daviess County Sheriff’s Office began their investigation, including marking evidence such as shell casings.
Dwayne Harper and Jerry Spurrier with DCSO placed cups on top of the shell casings. Spurrier later filed the evidence, while Harper was instructed to head to a site where the weapon could be.
Spurrier said they located 10 shell casings, blood, and clothing that had been cut off a victim. Spurrier said they only found one spent bullet at the scene. Each of the casings were individually bagged and then stored in the same envelope.
Spurrier said the next morning, the Examiner’s Office found one projectile (spent bullet) in Winstead’s body and six in Brown’s.
“We recovered 10 shell casings at the scene and we have recovered nine projectiles, with the ninth one being the one that was in Glover,” Spurrier said.
Harper was with Chief Investigator Bill Thompson when he conducted an interview and talked to the family of one of the deceased.
Another key source Thompson and lead investigator Morgan Palmiter interviewed was Trinity Davidson, who was a juvenile at the time. With the information they learned from the interview, they were able to further their investigation and “identify individuals to get on tape” according to Palmiter.
Another source they interviewed was Savannah Helm. Thompson said when interviewed her the first time, she was “untruthful.” This prompted the investigators to interview her a second time under a warrant; however, the warrant was not used due to her compliance.
“When I knocked on the door she immediately said ‘I want to tell you the truth,’” Thompson said. “…The second time, that I recall, she was completely cooperative with the investigation.”
Through their investigation, detectives were ultimately able to locate the weapon in the trailer park. Palmiter said the weapon was stored under a building in the trailer park and wrapped in a plastic bag — all of which was entered into evidence.
Palmiter said when Simmons was arrested, investigators were able to obtain Simmons’ cell phone.
Thompson said that prior to Simmons’ detainment, he and Palmiter went to a house where Simmons was staying with another man. The other man was in possession of a backpack that belonged to Simmons, Thompson said.
Thompson did not recall having a warrant for the backpack nor does he think he received consent to search the backpack. Nonetheless, he said he searched the bag. In the bag he found some money along with a cell phone.
DCSO Sgt. Lee Blanton came to the witness stand and presented the shell casings, bullets, Simmons’ phone, and the weapon that was found.
Hunter Stanley, with the Western Forensic Laboratory for Kentucky State Police, said that he conducted blood tests on the deceased along with Simmons to find any match on the magazine of the weapon. He said he did not find blood residue on the magazine.
Jessica Lyons, who works in the Automated Fingerprint Identification System with KSP, said she received the 10 shell casings, one of the bullets, the weapon with a magazine, and a plastic zipper bag, along with Simmons’ fingerprints.
The weapon was the only item found to have Simmons’ fingerprints on it.
Lawrence Pincher with KSP Crime Lab testified that he investigated the gun. He said that because of the specific model of the gun, it could be ruled that the 10 casings were fired from the gun, but it was inconclusive if the 8 projectiles investigated were fired from that gun.
