Crayton murder trial begins in Glasgow

BY MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
FOR GLASGOW NEWS 1
As jurors and others gradually returned to the courtroom from the lunch break that followed the hourslong jury-selection process, Inell Crayton sat at the defense table alone for the moment, intently looking through paperwork.
His parents sat on the first row behind him in the gallery in Barren Circuit Court, and a court security officer had positioned himself between Crayton, who is charged with murder, first-degree burglary and tampering with physical evidence and whose trial was about to begin in earnest.
Commonwealth’s Attorney John Gardner used his opening statement to give the 14 jurors, two of whom are alternates, a preview of all the things he believed the evidence would prove about the events of Dec. 28, 2018 – before and after the death of 22-year-old Ke’Shawn Sarver in the Cave City apartment he shared with his mother.
The alleged sequence of events the prosecutor laid out began when Crayton, Kayla Anderson and Devonja Sweat wanted to purchase some marijuana to sell, but their usual supplier didn’t have any. Anderson contacted Sarver, who said he would sell it to them but planned to simply take their money. When they arrived at Sarver’s apartment complex, he was already outside and got in Anderson’s vehicle, where he told the trio they would need to go elsewhere to get the product. He directed them to the supposed location of the marijuana, telling them he would need to go in alone with the $1,600, but he never returned to the car, instead taking off on foot with with his partner and returning home. Eventually, Crayton and Sweat got out to go looking for him and realized that Sarver was gone.
Later, back at Sarver’s apartment, Crayton kicked in the door and shot Sarver a total of three times, and the dog was also fatally wounded in the process, Gardner said. The trio fled, shedding some pieces of evidence along the way.
Gardner also played a couple of snippets from the video recording of the police “interview” with Crayton, in which the defendant said he shot Sarver.
Defense attorney Lee Davis told the jury of seven women and seven men that he didn’t believe in lengthy opening statements in which they were told what they would hear before they heard it again later, but the version the prosecution would have them believe was “wrong and incomplete,” making his voice considerably louder on those last three words.
Three witnesses were called over the course of the afternoon.
Sarver’s mother, Velesa Sarver, described her 5-foot-7-inch son as a “big o’ jolly giant” who smiled all the time and was often goofy.
She cried a bit and said “my baby” when asked to confirm the identity of a person in a photo as her son, and she discussed the 12-hour work schedule she had at the time and that the last time she saw him alive was as she left for work around 3 or 3:30 p.m., when his friend Andrew “Drew” Connor was around the apartment – possibly outside – as well. Velesa Sarver later described the scene she came home to that evening after getting a call at work, seeing a coroner vehicle right off the bat and seeing her son with “blood coming out of his mouth and his eyes partially open.”
She said the pit bull’s name was Capone.
Chris Poynter was a Cave City Police Department officer at the time who lived at the same apartment complex; after neighbors heard the gunfire, they came to get him, and he called for backup as he gathered essentials and prepared to leave, he said. The neighbors weren’t sure at first where the shots had been, but eventually the location was narrowed, and Poynter kept an eye on what he knew was the only door in or out of the place until two other officers arrived, at which point they entered the apartment, found Sarver and Capone, and checked the apartment for the presence of others. They determined that Sarver was deceased and exited the apartment, he testifed, and the assistance of the Kentucky State Police was requested due to the significance of the case.
Josh Amos was the lead KSP detective on the case, and the bulk of the afternoon involved his testimony about what was happening when he arrived and the steps that led to the arrest of Crayton and Anderson at Anderson’s Allen County residence and then later Sweat at his Nashville residence.
Gardner proceeded with the painstaking process of having Amos confirm whether photographs from the scene were an accurate depiction of what it looked like and describe various pieces of physical evidence before they were formally entered as exhibits for the trial.
Those included four shell casings and three “projectiles” from a 9 mm pistol that was later determined to be Crayton’s that were found at the scene – one in the refrigerator door, one the shower in the bathroom and one in the floor underneath Sarver’s body. A fourth projectile was recovered from Sarver’s body during autopsy, Amos said.
Davis’ primary approach was to question the absence of certain types of evidence – including the lack of documentation of the amount of lighting in the parking/driveway area of the apartment, a lack of any DNA evidence from the ballistics testing, a lack of measurements to denote the distance from the various elements in the rooms to one another and to the body. A plastic gun that appeared in a photograph of Sarver’s bedroom that Amos said was not an actual, working gun was not taken in as evidence, Amos testified, and Davis pointed out that some working guns now are made of plastic. The shoe print on the door was not measured for size or compared for determining the type of shoe it was, Davis pointed out through his questioning of Amos. Amos also testified, for example, that no rods were placed where the bullets were to determine the trajectory of the shots.
He had also questioned Poynter about whether he and the other two CCPD officers who initially checked the apartment had ever turned on any of the interior lights and was told they did not.
Sweat had originally been charged with murder as well, but that was dropped. He pleaded guilty to first-degree burglary and tampering with physical evidence, which led to a sentence of approximately 13 years. Anderson has not yet been tried for her charge of tampering with physical evidence.
The trial resumes at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. It is on the docket for a total of four days.
— To improve clarity, a portion of this report has been deleted since the original posting.