‘Can you please leave my mom?’ Teen asked during tearful 911 call before Harrisburg homicide

Sixteen-year-old La’Myra Randolph was in her room in Harrisburg, on the phone with 911, when she heard it. My mother’s boyfriend killed her in the hallway.prosecutors said Monday at the start of the man’s murder trial.

Brian McCullough, 39, charged with first-degree murder, sat in a Dauphin County courtroom as prosecutors replayed the frightened, tearful conversation between Randolph and a 911 operator on the night of Dec. 28, 2021. .

Deputy District Attorney Breese Lantzy told jurors that McCullough and Erika King were arguing for hours that night and that King had asked Randolph for help because McCullough had a gun.

“Brian McCullough,” Randolph whispered to the dispatcher when asked who his mother was fighting with that night at their home in the 1800 block of Boas Street.

As the operator tried to get more details, the teen pleaded with McCullough to leave her mother alone, according to the 911 call.

“Can you please leave my mom?” Randolph was heard asking during the call. Moments later, he began screaming and sobbing, repeatedly shouting “Mommy!”

Lantzy told the jury that the last thing Randolph heard from his mother was her screams for help when McCullough shot her five times. King was found dead face down in her second-floor bedroom, with shell casings scattered around the room and buried in the carpet.

“La’Myra Randolph was 16 years old and she didn’t lose her mother. They took his mother away from him,” Lantzy said.

McCullough and King had been in a volatile years-long relationship that family members told PennLive they were worried it would end badly. She had broken up with him and kicked him out in the past, but she always let him back.

“Everyone knew” that their relationship was toxic, Antjuan King, Erika King’s ex-husband and father of her two children, told PennLive in 2021.

“No one wanted them together,” Antjuan said.

The day of the shooting began as routine, Lantzy said in court Monday. Randolph, King and McCullough ran errands around the Harrisburg area and then returned to King’s home at 1816 Boas St.

While heading home, King made a light comment about cooking dinner that night if “he” was coming, referring to McCullough, Lantzy said. McCullough misinterpreted this comment as an insult, Lantzy said, and sat sullenly in his car outside the Boas Street home for hours after King and Randolph entered.

After a couple of hours, Lantzy said McCullough came in and an argument ensued between him and King. King asked Randolph for help around 9 pm and was shot within about 20 minutes.

Randolph told police he heard McCullough apparently fall down the stairs as he ran out of King’s room and tried to flee the scene.

“I’ve been shot,” he told Harrisburg police officers who detained him on the sidewalk in front of King’s home, Lantzy told jurors. She said police examined him and never found any injuries other than a scrape on his knee.

McCullough’s defense attorney, Paul Kovatch, told jurors to put aside the 911 call and focus on the facts of the case, not the emotion of the homicide.

He alluded to the possibility that there was another person in the house that night who could have killed King, but did not elaborate during opening statements. Kovatch said no one saw McCullough enter the house that night or shoot King.

Harrisburg detectives, under pressure to solve the homicides quickly, never considered any suspect in King’s homicide other than McCullough, Kovatch said.

“The Commonwealth will burden you with emotional incidents from the beginning, wanting to take advantage of your sympathy. You’re going to have to judge credibility. Who saw what? said. “They have to prove their guilt. “We don’t have to prove his innocence.”

Kovatch said he plans to call a neighbor to the stand, claiming he lived next door to King and never heard fighting coming from his house. But another woman told PennLive in 2021 that she saw signs of abuse during the three years she and King were neighbors.

McCullough’s murder trial is scheduled to continue throughout the week. In addition to first-degree murder, he is charged with receiving stolen property and prohibited possession of a firearm. McCullough faces life in prison if convicted of first-degree murder.

Several members of King’s family gathered in court Monday as McCullough’s trial began. Days after her death, her family said that, above all, King was a devoted mother to her children. In addition to her daughter, King had a son, who was 12 years old when she was murdered.

“I just want people to know that she was a good mother,” King’s sister-in-law Jaquetta King said in 2021. “She always cared about family.”

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