Lawyer: Intruders killed girlfriend

Author(s): JOE CYAN JR. Date: April 29, 2010 Section: South LA.

& Business

A prosecutor told jurors Wednesday that Darrell Williams – not masked knife- and gun-wielding intruders as Williams claims -brutally stabbed his girlfriend to death in her home on July 2, 2007. “People lie. Physical evidence does not lie. Follow the evidence,” Assistant District Attorney Mark Dumaine argued at the start of Williams’ second-degree murder trial in the slaying of Sherrie Albert.

Defense attorney Brent Stockstill countered that sheriffs investigators jumped to conclusions in charging Williams, and he suggested that a “jilted ex-boyfriend” killed the 29-year-old Albert.

“They don’t investigate him at all,” Stockstill said of the former boyfriend who he said had a history of domestic abuse and who showed up at the murder scene with scratches on his body.

Williams, 33, and Albert have two children together.

The trial resumes today in state District Judge Don Johnson’s courtroom.

In his opening statement to the jury, Dumaine said Albert died from a penetrating knife wound to the heart and questioned how Williams escaped such penetrating wounds.

“lie was able to avoid serious injury,” Dumaine said.

The reason, he alleged, is because Williams is “a killer.”

“Sherrie Albert was fighting for her life, and she lost,” Dumaine said.

Jurors were shown a video of the gruesome crime scene. The floor of Albert’s home at 8610 Hickock Drive in the Comite Estates subdivision was coated with blood from the front door, into the kitchen, down the hallway and into a child’s bedroom, where her nude body was found.

Dumaine said Williams’ DNA was found underneath Albert’s fingernails, in scratches on her face and on a bloody knife.

“His blood is on the knife because he was stabbed with the knife,” Stockstill told the jury.

A Sheriffs Office affidavit says Williams claims he and Albert were having an argument on July 1, 2007.

While parked in the driveway of her home, Williams hit Albert with his shoe and Albert struck him in the face, causing a small cut, the affidavit states.

of the attackers cut his wrist and forced him back into the bedroom with his dead girlfriend, the affidavit says.

Williams claims he stayed in the bedroom from Sunday morning until Monday afternoon, when he was able to crawl through the kitchen and out the front door to get help from a neighbor, the affidavit states.

The affidavit says detectives found inconsistencies in parts of Williams’ statement, including the fact that there was only one set of footprints through the blood, and those footprints were left by Williams.

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