Witness to videotaped beating: Defendant ‘stomped him in the head’
BY RUMMANA HUSSAIN Criminal Courts Reporter
Silvonus Shannon (left) is on trial in the beating death of Derrion Albert during a brawl outside Fenger High School in 2009.
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There were two kicks and a hard blow.
Silvonus Shannon’s yellow and black Nikes made contact with Derrion Albert’s head at least three times during the infamous videotaped brawl outside Fenger High School, a teenage witness testified Monday.
“Silvonus came around and stomped him. He stomped him in the head,” 17-year-old Dominic Johnson said.
Johnson — the cousin of a juvenile boy found delinquent, or guilty, of Albert’s murder last month — identified Shannon and others charged in the fatal beating while combing over the cell phone recording of Albert’s beating with assistant Cook County state’s attorney Kathleen Bankhead.
Anjanette Albert sobbed Monday during the first presentation of the now-notorious footage, which went viral and attracted worldwide attention following the Sept. 24, 2009, attack. During subsequent viewings for the jury, the slain 16-year-old’s mother walked out of Judge Nicholas Ford’s courtroom.
Shannon, 20, kicked Albert twice as he lay on the ground near the Agape Community Center after classes let out that fall afternoon, according to Johnson. Then the khaki-clad Shannon took a flying leap before landing on Albert’s head, he said.
“He jumped in the air. He landed on Derrion’s head,” said Johnson, who is awaiting trial for residential burglary in a separate case.
Shannon can be seen kicking Albert, who was knocked down by the punches and hits delivered by young men swinging wooden railroad ties. But people walk in front of the camera at one point, obscuring where Shannon landed after he is seen jumping two feet in the air near Albert’s motionless body.
Defense attorney Robert Byman said Shannon was only trying to stop the rumble between the Fenger students from Altgeld Gardens and a neighborhood near the Roseland school known as “The Ville.” Albert, in fact, threw a punch at Shannon, Byman said.
The kicks Shannon delivered either missed or were “grazing” in nature, the defense attorney said.
“Derrion Albert didn’t deserve to die but he was a willing participant in that battle,” Byman said in his opening statements.
“. . .He [Shannon] was defending himself. He was doing what he had to do.”
Three others, Eric Carson, Eugene Riley and Lapoleon Colbert, are awaiting trial in Albert’s murder.
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