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A Columbia City man was found guilty Wednesday after a two-day trial in Kosciusko Circuit Court of shooting an employee of a Warsaw bar.
Billy Dean Little, 32, could be sentenced to six to 20 years each for the Class B felony charges of aggravated battery and possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon. Little also was convicted of being a habitual offender, which can add up to 30 years to any prison term he is given when he is sentenced at 9:30 a.m. April 10.
Little shot Bruce Allen Smith, 43, of North Webster, June 4 after he, his brother and another man were refused service at Good Times, a bar formerly located on South Buffalo Street. The gun and a shirt Little was wearing when the shooting took place were later recovered along Crystal Lake Road, where police investigators were told the items could be found. Little apparently changed his shirt after the shooting because he knew police were looking for a man in a white shirt.
The four-man, eight-woman jury deliberated on the first two charges for about one-half hour before returning its verdicts. After hearing evidence on the habitual offender charge, the jury was out for less than five minutes. Little was previously convicted of felonies in Ohio and in Marshall County.
Kosciusko County Prosecutor Steven Hearn said there was "no doubt that it was Billy Little who committed this crime." Hearn called the efforts of Little's court-appointed attorney, Warren Murphy, to place doubt in the minds of the jurors as to whether Little or his brother, Robert Little, was the shooter "a smoke screen."
"Was there any evidence that it was anybody else?" Hearn asked jurors in his closing argument.
Robert Little claimed Fifth Amendment protection when called to testify as part of the state's case. Murphy was denied a chance to call Robert Little to the stand for the defense case for "demonstrative purpose." No defense witnesses were presented in the case.
