A Queens native who fatally shot his girlfriend twice in her luxury New Rochelle apartment two years ago is claiming self-defense, his lawyer told jurors at the start of the man's murder trial.
But a prosecutor countered that Robert Wooten was the first to brandish a weapon that morning and killed Meisha Williams because he was angry she was breaking up with him.
"He wouldn't take no for an answer and he killed her," Assistant District Attorney Edward McLoughlin said Monday, Sept. 28, in opening statements in Westchester County Court.
Wooten, 30, is charged with second-degree murder and second- and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon in the Aug. 24, 2024, killing of Williams in her 21st floor apartment at 55 Clinton Place.
Williams, also
30, had moved into the building - called One Clinton Park - two months before the shooting. She used an assumed name of someone her mother said was a friend of Williams', possibly because she knew she might not have passed a background check under her own name. She had a pending felony charge in Virginia stemming from an incident in which she stabbed Wooten during an argument at a gas station.
Despite Wooten having an order of protection against Williams, he was staying at the apartment the week of the shooting. A friend of Williams and the friend's boyfriend were also there as they were seeking her help renting an apartment in the building.
On that Saturday morning, the couple sensed there was tension between Williams and Wooten and went for a walk to give them space, McLoughlin said. When they called Williams to check on her she didn't answer. As they returned to the building, they saw Wooten leaving and he allegedly told them he had shot her and they should call for help.
Video from a motion-sensitive Blink camera that Williams installed in the apartment will offer crucial evidence of the altercation, McLoughlin said, but the actual shooting was not captured. He said the fight escalated after Wooten hit Williams in the face and that she assailed him for pulling out a gun in her apartment. He suggested she grabbed the knife only after the gun was displayed and that jurors should focus on who was backing up on the video and who was advancing.
McLoughlin acknowledged that it would be the responsibility of him and Assistant District Attorney Kevin Jones to disprove that the shooting was justified. But he insisted that Wooten acted not out of fear but anger that he was being dumped. He cited the five shots Wooten fired - five decisions he made to intentionally kill her, McLoughlin suggested, with two bullets striking Williams in the back.
"Is it justified or punishment?" McLoughlin asked. "Is it justified or revenge? Is it justified or is it desperate anger?"
MacDonald said gaps in the video would leave jurors with an incomplete account of what happened that morning. He said they would learn about the emotional and physical abuse the "bigger, taller and heavier" Williams subjected Wooten to and the "devious and calculating control" she exerted over him.
Referring to the knife she brandished in the apartment that morning, he said it wasn't a small paring or steak knife, but a butcher knife.
"This is her weapon of choice," he said. "The weapon of her history with him."
The gun was never recovered. Wooten was arrested that night in Queens after New Rochelle and Westchester County police were able to track his Cadillac Escalade after it drove off from the building.
The former leasing agent for the building testified Monday that he used an emergency key to enter the apartment after the visitors said they were worried Williams had been shot. He said he looked inside and saw her bleeding on the floor of the bathroom and called police.
He said he didn't know her real name until after her death.
Wooten faces up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted of murder. The trial before Westchester Judge George Fufidio resumes Tuesday.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Boyfriend on trial in fatal shooting of woman in New Rochelle apartment
