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Deonte Baber trial: Witness says she saw murder suspect running from scene

Posted at 4:36 PM, May 16, 2019
and last updated 2019-05-16 19:36:32-04

CINCINNATI — A woman who said she heard a fatal shooting on a Walnut Hills street two years ago testified Thursday in the trial of the accused shooter.

The woman, who WCPO is not identifying per a judge's order, picked Deonte Baber out of a photo lineup as the man she saw running away from the scene where Jamie Urton was killed on March 24, 2017. She said she was "100 percent sure" it was him.

"My neighbor and I were sitting, we heard the gunshots and I saw the young man that I frequently saw in the neighborhood running from the direction of where gunfire had happened," she said.

Urton had been driving down Kenton Street when he accidentally hit a boy who ran out into the street. Urton stopped, and police said he was beaten, pulled from his car and shot. Baber, 27, is charged with murder in Urton's death.

The woman testified that Baber was wearing the same distinctive blue and orange shirt when he saw him that he could be seen wearing in a Facebook post on the day of Urton's killing.

Earlier this week, jurors also heard testimony from Jamal Killings, the father of the boy hit by Urton's car. Killings also picked Baber out of a photo lineup as the shooter. Killings said he saw Baber run over holding a gun and then saw him fire several times.

"And then I froze because I was right there and I didn't know if he was going to shoot me," Killings said. "I don't know this person."

Killings is also charged in connection to Urton's death. However, Detective Kurt Ballman with the Cincinnati Police Department Homicide Unit testified Wednesday that investigators moved from Killings as their suspect to Baber after finding video of the shooting from a nearby home.

Prosecutors are expected to finish presenting their case Friday. Then the defense will have their turn.

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