Trial begins in Hamilton Ave. murders

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - The trial of Desmond Turner, accused of murdering seven people on Hamilton Avenue in June 2006 is under way.

It began with the opening statement from Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi.

His opening lines: “Desmond Turner is a killer. On June first, 2006, he was talking with people in the 500 block of Hamilton about ‘hitting a lick’ – street slang for committing a robbery.”

“This is an incredibly tough case,” Brizzi said. “These, I call them babies, they were 11, 5, and 8, and they were executed. And the evidence is going to show that they were executed. And so as a father, as your prosecutor, it’s tough. It’s really tough.”

Special Coverage: Desmond Turner Hamilton Avenue Murder Trial

Following the opening statement, the prosecution called Officer Michael Kermon to take the stand.

Officer Kermon was the first to respond to the home at 560 North Hamilton Avenue after a report of shots fired.

A drawing, entered as evidence in court Monday, shows where the bodies were found.

There were seven in all – three of them, children lying on a bed in the back of the house. All of them were shot.

Officer Kermon testified, “I’m a father myself. I guess it would be the father in me wanting peace for his children. And I stood at the door and made the sign of the cross in Spanish.”

Two of those children were brothers to Janie Covarrubias.

“I’m having nightmares and to go through the next two weeks having to hear things that I didn’t know, that I’m finding out now – it’s just reliving the whole thing,” she said.

Some family members of the victims disagree with the prosecutor’s decision not to seek the death penalty.

“Well I'm sure it's not fair to them, that he lives and they're dead, but the good Lord is going to judge him down the road, we all know that,” neighbor Frank Dodson said.

Meanwhile, one of Turner’s defense attorneys, Lorinda Youngcourt directed the judge’s attention to three other families on Hamilton Avenue who used to threaten the family members who lived at 560 with physical harm – calling them snitches.

Youngcourt also pointed to prosecutors’ lack of DNA evidence.

Turner had at one point faced the death penalty in this case, but in a deal with prosecutors, he will now face only the possibility of life without parole if he’s convicted.

In exchange for that, prosecutors got a trial with just a judge, not a jury.

So, Turner’s fate is essentially in the hands of one man, Judge Robert Altice.

The trial is expected to last two weeks. Turner's alleged accomplice, James Stewart, is set to go to trial in November.