A Tennessee man found guilty of shooting a woman in 2006 during an attempted home invasion in Orangeburg maintains he wasn’t the masked gunman involved. “I wanted to say I am innocent,” Antoinelle “Troy” Owens, 28, of Chattanooga told the court Tuesday. “God have mercy on the jury’s souls.”

Circuit Court Judge James C. Williams, however, said there was “strong circumstantial evidence” to convict Owens of assault and battery with intent to kill and attempted first-degree burglary.

“I agree with the verdict,” Williams said. “I think it was the proper verdict.”

Williams sentenced Owens to 15 years on each charge, ordering the sentences to run at the same time.

The charges against Owens came after a June 2006 assault on a Hillsboro woman as she was leaving for work. Investigators say Owens tried forcing his way into her home at gunpoint. When she apparently didn’t move quickly enough, he shot the woman in the thigh before running off, police say.

“You’re the judges of the credibility and the judges of the facts,” Assistant Solicitor Don Sorenson told the jury in his closing argument. “You can tell us what happened back on June 5 in 2006.”

Owens’ defense team countered that the day was a nightmare for all involved.

“It was a nightmare for Miss (Irene) Shannon,” defense attorney Peggy Hinds told the jurors. “But it was also a nightmare for Mr. Owens, because he was arrested for a crime he did not commit.”

The jury spent about two hours deliberating.

Shannon testified on Monday that as she left for work at around 6 a.m. that day, a gunman wearing a ski mask ran into her carport where she stood with a child’s car seat and a cup and pushed her up against a wall, demanding she unlock the door to the home.

The victim said she believes she didn’t retrieve the door key fast enough for Owens. She said he shot her in the right thigh before running toward nearby Broughton Street.

Police were notified by Shannon’s husband, who remained inside the home. About an eighth of a mile away from Shannon’s residence, a man matching the description given was spotted in the back of Memorial Park Cemetery near a storage shed.

Sorenson said law enforcement officers were searching for a black man wearing a ski mask, black shirt and blue jeans in the nearby woods and they found someone matching that description.

“And what happens? Like a Jack-in-the-Box, Antoinelle Owens pops up out of the woods,” he said. “They end up chasing him into those woods.”

Stressing that the time of day was significant, Sorenson said generally few people are out at that hour.

“This is not something that happened at 3 o’clock in the afternoon,” he said. “Public Safety didn’t go to the mall and pick somebody out matching the description. This is 6:30 in the morning.”

The time factor was not lost on Hinds and co-counselor Doug Mellard who questioned the victim’s ability to see well that early in the day during an incident that lasted only a short while.

“Ladies and gentlemen, use your common sense,” Hinds said. “How can she be 100 percent when she only saw him for seconds?”

Defense counselors focused a good portion of their argument on the fact that investigators were unable to find key evidence.

“The officers did not find a gun. They did not find a ski mask,” Hinds said, suggesting a metal detector could have been used to search the wooded area for the weapon.

Investigators, however, say they did find a tiny particle of lead on the back of Owens’ right hand. Confirmed as a expert witness in gunshot residue examination, State Law Enforcement Division analyst John Roberts said the single particle was not enough to determine it came from a gunshot. But the lead particle could only come from three sources: “cheap Chinese Christmas lights, a lead smelting plant or a firearm,” he said.

“These ways, in your experience, are the three ways you can get it on your hands?” Sorenson asked.

“Yes, sir,” Roberts said.

Prior to sentencing, Mellard noted that his client had no prior record before the incident, was one class short of a political science degree and played pro basketball in Switzerland at one time.

Saying she raised her son to be a “good child,” Owens’ mother, Valerie Owens, said she put him through college and nursed him when he was ill.

“You can bring up a child and show him the right way,” she said. “I ask the court for mercy.”

T&D Staff Writer Richard Walker can be reached by e-mail at rwalker@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5516. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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