What started as a fight between two teenage girls in a crowded Covington alleyway ended with two gunmen opening fire on one another, leaving three children and one of the shooters wounded, according to prosecutors.
More than four years after the April 2022 shootout, Thomas Brown Sr., 46, and 21-year-old Taquan Estes are being tried in Kenton County Circuit Court. Prosecutors say they fired into a group of kids and adults gathered for the fight.
Both men are charged with first-degree assault, rioting and wanton endangerment.
"It never should have happened," Kenton County Commonwealth's Attorney Rob Sanders said of the shooting during opening statements on Oct. 7. "None of these children would have been shot if these two men hadn't started shooting.
Prosecutor says shooters turned a 'girl fight into a gunfight'
Prosecutors said an online dispute involving a 15-year-old and 17-year-old boiled over into an in-person confrontation and fight, incited by one girl's momand a "parade of onlookers and encouragers."
Cellphone videos of the fight played in court showed a chaotic scene as a large group of people gathered around the girls shouting and chanting. When the gunshots rang out, the panicked crowd dispersed down the alleyway – one person barging through a wooden fence gate.
A 14-year-old girl who was videoing the confrontation was shot in the hand, leg and neck. She remains paralyzed and bound to a wheelchair, Sanders said.
Prosecutors said Brown pulled a handgun and pointed it in the air before shooting into the crowd in an exchange of fire with Estes, who was captured on video in a shooter's stance.
Three children, including Brown's son, were injured in the hail of gunfire. Brown was also wounded, shot in the abdomen and in the buttocks.
"Because these two armed men decided to turn a girl fight into a gunfight, four people got shot," Sanders told the jury.
17-year-old shooter opened fire to 'protect himself,' attorney says
Alex Lutgen Lacy, one of Estes' attorneys, said in court that her client was a 17-year-old boy trying to break up a fight between other kids, but was forced to defend himself when a grown man pulled a gun.
Estes sought help from Brown to break up the melee, but the man ignored him, Lutgen Lacy said. She added that Brown ran down the alleyway clutching a gun in his waistband after the fight began.
Brown was "stone-faced" while observing the fight and did nothing to intervene, she said, adding that his behavior made Estes nervous. The attorney said Estes then heard Brown racking a gun and saw him raising it in the air.
Afraid that Brown was going to shoot him or someone else in the crowd, Lutgen Lacy said, Estes pulled out his own gun and opened fire on Brown. She pointed to video of Brown running away as the shots rang out, firing wildly behind him into the crowd.
"The only thing that Taquan can do is protect himself," she added.
Brown's attorney decided to reserve their opening statements until the prosecution's case has concluded.
Men charged in quadruple shooting convicted of other gun crimes
Both Estes and Brown were convicted of other felony charges while awaiting trial in the shooting case, court records show.
Brown pleaded guilty in 2023 to illegally owning a handgun during the April 2022 shooting. He was sentenced to 10 years. He's not allowed to own firearms due to prior felony convictions.
A Kenton County jury found Estes guilty late last year of charges related to a March 2022 incident of gunshots fired in the parking lot of a Sunoco gas station on Madison Avenue in Covington. He was sentenced to nine years in the Kentucky State Reformatory.
Court filings show Covington police knew of Estes well before the gunfight, with reports dating back to 2018, many of which involved guns.
The reports include allegations of assault and Estes giving a stolen gun to another juvenile, who was caught with it in school. He was not charged in most of those instances, although he was adjudicated delinquent for an assault that happened in 2019.
Estes was himself the victim of a shooting when he was just 13 years old, according to the court filings.
Both men face a sentence of up to 20 years on the assault charges, as well as penalties of one to five years for the rioting and wanton endangerment counts, if convicted.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Prosecutor says gunmen on trial turned a 'girl fight into a gunfight'
