Left: A gunshot (Facebook/Akira Fletcher). Right: Nyema Norton throwing a rock (Facebook/Akira Fletcher). Inset: Akira Fletcher (Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office).
Cellphone footage shows the fateful moments in which an Ohio woman fatally shot another during a nighttime confrontation. The defendant, Akira Fletcher, 23, maintained self-defense, but Hamilton County prosecutors argued her killing Nyema Norton, 29, was murder.
Fletcher posted videos to Facebook, and though that footage is now deleted, both parts are together in the embed below.
Warning: The video is disturbing.
Norton and another woman are seen on video outside Fletcher’s vehicle in a parking lot during the July 12 incident. As previously reported, Fletcher wrote that she had called 911 twice.
“I was being punched in my face, rocks thrown at me, and Nyema trying to get in my car,” she wrote.
The video shows the women and Fletcher taunting one another. The women appeared to smash out Fletcher’s back window during the first video.
At one point in the video, Fletcher yelled out to the women repeatedly, threatening to shoot them.
“You should be happy you don’t get clapped,” later adding, “Come anywhere near me, I bet you’re gonna get clapped.”
Fletcher’s first video ended with her apparently beginning to drive away, but when the second video begins, her vehicle is stopped and the driver’s window appears smashed out. Norton and the other woman are on the sidewalk, with a car between them and Fletcher’s vehicle.
Fletcher said they were going to jail, and told them repeatedly. “Hit me again.”
Norton walked forward, briefly reached down out of sight of the camera, and then lunged through the broken driver’s side window. Fletcher opened fire four times.
“She busted my driver side window out to attack me, she continued to try and get in my car to stab me and I let her hit me while I was on the phone with 911 asking for help,” Fletcher’s narrative concluded. “I told them to stop over and over and over again. I never got out my car to fight or anything and I allowed her to punch me more than once.”
Both Norton and the other woman were shot, but Norton was pronounced dead from her injuries on Aug. 26.
A hearing in the case is set for Tuesday, online records show.
Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
