Feb. 21—GOSHEN — A jury found Sherman Whitener guilty in the murder of Deontae Harris Wednesday.

The verdict came around 4:40 p.m. after Whitener’s defense team offered no testimony on his behalf.

“There is not one shred of evidence that disproves self-defense,” Defense attorney Denise Turner alleged during closing arguments before deliberations. “Not a single eyewitness can say exactly what happened. Even though there were four people there, no one can say exactly what happened.”

Whitener, 24, Elkhart, is charged with the shooting and killing of Harris, 28, Elkhart, in the 600 block of Cleveland Avenue in Elkhart July 8, 2021. Sentencing is scheduled for 10 a.m. March 21.

According to a probable cause affidavit, the shooting in Elkhart happened shortly before 9 p.m. July 8. Elkhart police were called to the area for the sounds of gunfire, where they found Harris lying in the street. Harris was transported to Elkhart General Hospital but died from the injuries.

Police spent much of the investigation trying to figure out what happened, and who did it.

Tyren Allen, 35, was reportedly there, and he’s being charged with assisting a criminal, implicated in the murder. Allen was arrested for a misdemeanor theft about a week ago, and Elkhart County Circuit Court Judge Michael Christofeno agreed to get him a public defender so he could speak on the incident, a situation that Allen claimed to not have much memory of due to the death of a close family member and being intoxicated.

Surveillance footage from a nearby home shows a man on the street later getting into a black Chevrolet Impala and leaving the area.

According to police, Allen was the driver of that Chevrolet Impala reported at the scene. Allen said during the trial that he was parked near Ullery Park on Cleveland Avenue in Elkhart, with his daughters, and one of their moms, Ronesha Andrews, waiting on a son, who was supposed to be walking to meet him at his grandmother’s house nearby. He’d pulled over after looping the block, when a man, Whitener, appeared in the alley nearby.

Seconds before Whitener arrived, walking through the alley, Allen’s phone called him. At 8:51 p.m., Allen pulled up to Whitener walking by the park, and then pulled over after speaking briefly to Whitener, and got out of the vehicle. At 8:52 p.m., a phone call is made from Allen’s phone to Harris’ — it lasted about 8 seconds.

Victora Kyle, 29, Elkhart, Harris’ fiancée, told the jury she’d gone to Walmart that evening with her mom to get snacks for a game she and Harris intended to watch that evening, and when was Facetiming him around 8:20 p.m., he was still at home at their apartment on the north side of Elkhart playing a video game.

Less than half an hour later, as she and her mother were leaving Walmart, her sister called and said Harris had been shot.

Several calls were made between Harris, Johnson, Allen, and Whitener, with the last call at 8:54 p.m. from Harris to Allen, 42 seconds before the shooting, and the first call coming in at 8:02 p.m. from Whitener to Harris.

Kyle said that Harris knew Whitener casually by a street name, but she’d only heard the name mentioned once about two weeks before the shooting, regarding a shoe purchase, and that they didn’t appear to be friends.

“That was the first I’d heard them talk,” Kyle clarified when asked. “No problems, just not friends.”

She didn’t learn Whitener’s real name until he became a suspect.

Allen claimed that he was mostly looking at his phone while Whitener approached and spoke with him, watching videos from her cousin’s funeral. Becker asked him what happened next, and Allen said he didn’t recall.

At 8:24 p.m. Harris’ phone called Delanos Johnson, 31, minutes after getting off the phone with Kyle.

Johnson testified briefly at the trial.

“He had came to where we was at,” Johnson said. “On Hubbard, if you see some friends hanging out, you just kind of pull up.”

At the time, Harris had driven his own car to where Johnson was, but then asked Johnson for a ride to Cleveland Avenue, where he was told to circle the block.

“He just said ‘On Cleveland,’ so I just kind of …” Johnson said. “I was just driving. … I just knew he asked for a ride to Cleveland. … That’s where I know he hangs out with his fiancée’s family sometimes.”

The first time, he did not see the black Impala, but the second time, it was parked on the street.

“There were familiar guys that I knew,” Johnson said, so Johnson began to pull up toward the men that he knew casually. “When I started to pull up toward the car, Deontae rolled the window down and he was talking to them, but I wasn’t paying attention to what was being said.”

Johnson said he intended to pull up and parallel park in front of a vehicle ahead of the Impala so he was slowly inching ahead.

“When you see someone you know, you pull up and talk to them,” Johnson said. “It was a friendship attempt.”

“There was so much going on I really don’t know,” Allen said when asked what happened, claiming that Harris then became “aggressive,” asserting that Harris said was getting out of the car before the vehicle had completely stopped.

Johnson never did get to the parking spot. Instead, he heard his passenger door open.

“As soon as he got out the car, I heard gunshots,” Johnson said. “I have PSTD because I’ve been shot before too, so as soon as I heard it, my first instinct was to get away from the gunshots.”

A minute later, at 8:53 p.m., the black Ford Edge is seen in the video driven by Delanos Johnson with Harris in the passenger’s seat, inching by the Impala and the two men outside the vehicle. Whitener is seen in the next screenshot of the video, beginning to walk away, reaching into his pocket. In next screenshot, Harris is seen getting out of the moving, as the video appears to show Whitener turned back around, with his arms raised and a muzzle flash from behind the Edge before taking off and running to an apartment in the 300 block of Chapman Avenue. A tree obstructs the view of Harris and much of Allen during the seconds the shooting occurs.

“Anything could have happened,” Elkhart County Prosecutor’s Office Criminal Intelligence Analyst Jeremy Stout said.

Johnson said he didn’t see Harris with a gun, but he also didn’t look over and couldn’t see his hands while driving. Johnson, however, did have Harris’ cell phone and his keys, which had been left in the car. He provided it to the family later that night.

But video surveillance shows that Allen picked up something off the ground, possibly a gun, cell phone, or car keys.

“The police said I picked up a gun,” Allen said. “I don’t know if it was keys or what, I don’t remember. … They told me that so many times that I said, ‘OK, that’s what I did.’ There was so much going on at one time, I had tears in my eyes, and I don’t recall.”

Turner reminded the jury that despite that, Allen had told police that he did pick up the gun, and threw it into the air before entering his grandmother’s house as they left the scene, and helped police in their failed search for the weapon.

Turner alleged that the most crucial part of the video, what Harris was doing, is missing, due to the tree’s obstruction.

Dani Messick is the education and entertainment reporter for The Goshen News. She can be reached at dani.messick@goshennews.com or at 574-538-2065.