By VIRGINIA BRIDGES

 

Todra Thornton had finally relented to letting her best friend and her boyfriend stay at her house. “Come on, man, let me and Rico stay,” Erika Desiree Downey had pleaded in September 2016, Thornton said. “I was like, all right.” Thornton picked up the couple, Downey and Larico Fonyte Dunn, and brought them to her apartment. There, she stayed in her room, but heard them fighting when she went to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal.

Donna Chavis explains the Principles of Environmental Justice “I was like, ‘Girl, y’all crazy,’” she said and walked back to her room, Thornton told The News & Observer. About 10 minutes later, Thornton heard “Pop! Pop!”

“I just slung the door open, and I was like ‘What the hell?’” Thornton said. Downey was coming down the hallway, almost falling forward as Dunn followed, shooting, Thornton said. One bullet grazed Thornton’s cheek. Another hit her in the buttocks. Dunn shot Downey in the back and then stood over her and shot her in the face, a prosecutor said in court this week. After Dunn ran out, Thornton called 911 and applied pressure to her friend’s wounds as she died in Thornton’s arms. “She was my only friend,” Thornton said. “I had her back, and she had mine.”

Click here to view the original article