In Self-Defense Podcast 132: Cincinnati Smash

Akira Fletcher had an ongoing feud with another woman, Nyema Norton, culminating in a confrontation where Fletcher shot Norton after an initial altercation had seemingly ended. The case touches on themes of de-escalation, managing emotional responses, and the dangers of following an aggressor. Fletcher’s decision to exit her vehicle and re-engage Norton verbally, after the initial threat had seemingly subsided, complicated her self-defense claim. Her history of animosity with Norton raises doubts about her motives for using deadly force.  Her decision to share incriminating evidence on social media further exacerbated her legal challenges. The case serves as a cautionary tale for how emotions, an ongoing grudge, and the failure to de-escalate can severely impact the outcome of a self-defense claim.

Steve Moses joins hosts Shawn Vincent and Don West to look at the lessons learned from this incident.

 

 

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Shawn Vincent:

Hey everybody. Thanks for joining the podcast today. I am Shawn Vincent. I’m your host. Today we’re going to be taking you to Cincinnati, Ohio. It is a tragic shooting between two women who had an ongoing grudge with one another. It ended up being a fatal shooting, and there are some really important lessons here for armed offenders and concealed carriers. One is that when you have a history of a grudge or a feud with somebody, that can drastically complicate a self-defense charge or a case if it ends in a self-defense shooting.

 

In this case, there’s two distinct episodes, one where one of the parties seems to be the first aggressor, and then a second part of the episode where the defender could be perceived as being the first aggressor, and it’s going to bring up issues of how being the first aggressor or the provocateur, as Don likes to say, can complicate your self-defense claim.

 

And then finally, we’re going to have a conversation about why sometimes people don’t leave a confrontation when they have a safe way to do so. There’s this idea of “frozen feet” where people get so confused or overwhelmed by the situation that they just don’t know what to do. We also entertain the idea that people get emotionally hijacked–that their passions get the better of their reason when they could have otherwise just walked away from an event. 

 

Also, you’re going to see in this case that the defender, although she made so many mistakes that are great lessons for us, she believed so passionately that she was in the right, that she actually shared video of the shooting with the local news, and that drastically complicated her case.

 

I’m joined today as always by National Trial Counsel for CCW Safe, Don West. He’s an experienced criminal defense attorney. And also, our friend, Steve Moses. He’s a well-regarded firearms instructor, also a contributor for CCW Safe. 

 

These conversations that we have are not legal advice, they’re not tactical advice. What they are is an informed discussion of real-life, high-profile self-defense cases designed to allow you as an armed defender or a concealed carrier to consider different types of self-defense situations and think ahead about what your response might’ve been. So, thanks for joining us. Again. Here’s my conversation.  I’m going to call this the Cincinnati Smash case. Was it grudge or self-defense? with Don West and Steve Moses.

 

Shawn Vincent:

So how about we go to Cincinnati, Ohio? There is a woman named Akira Fletcher, and there’s a woman that she’s acquainted with. Her last name’s Norton. They have a little bit of a history with one another. Apparently, Norton pulled a gun on Fletcher at some point and threatened to shoot her or threaten to kill her. That caused some legal issues. The two were scheduled to appear in court at some time on that issue. The beef they had was ongoing, and there was an encounter in a parking lot at night at some point here where Norton and an associate of hers were there. They’re harassing Fletcher. She’s in her car and they’re really giving it to her, banging on windows. At some point they have a rock and they’re smashing windows. There’s a claim that tires were slashed.

 

And Fletcher, she’s in the car and she decides to record this on her cell phone. So, she has video of it. She’s very sort of matter-of-factly calmly saying basically, “I have a gun. I have a gun.” This goes on for a little bit. And then the two women leave. They start walking away. And that wasn’t good enough for Fletcher. She actually gets out of her car. The first recording stops. At some point, a second recording comes on. I’m not sure if it’s on her first recording or the second recording, but she gets out of the car and she yells at them, provokes them again, says that “You should be happy you don’t get clapped,” a couple of times.

 

So, the two women, they come back and it appears in the video that she’s got a rock n one hand, it’s alleged that she has a knife in the other hand. When the video picks up, now we’re inside the car and, clearly, now windows are completely being smashed. And Fletcher, the defender, she pulls out her firearm and she fires four times. She hits both of the other women. The one woman who wasn’t identified in any of the news articles we saw, she survived with injury. Norton, she was shot critically. She was in the hospital for six weeks, died six weeks later.

 

And I imagine there’s an investigation going on around this. The shooter felt, I think Don, I think her legal troubles were mounting and believing that she fired in self-defense, she actually posted these videos on her Facebook and tagged the local news agency who then saw it and covered the story. And that’s how we know about it. She was arrested the next morning. Those videos are obviously going to be key pieces of evidence in the prosecution of her.

 

Don West:

She certainly invited all of that attention. I’m assuming that she took both videos. It appears as though she did, including from within the car…

 

.Shawn Vincent:

That’s right.

 

Don West:

At the moments just before the series of gunshots that resulted in the death of Norton.

 

Shawn Vincent:

A local criminal defense attorney who does some commentary for the news looked at it. He told the press that he’s sort of surprised looking at the video that they charged her. He said that he thinks she has a pretty good self-defense claim, but there’s also some things that she did that helps me understand why she was arrested for this and actually being held without bond. So, she’s in jail while this criminal prosecution is going on. And I feel like one big mistake here that Fletcher made was, in essence, at a certain point, even though these two women had damaged her car and seemingly terrorized her and harassed her, they were walking away and she decided that that wasn’t the end of it. And she got out of the car and she verbally re-engaged them.

 

Don West:

I think that’s critically important because, in fact, the attorney that was commenting on the sequence of events made a point of claiming that this was two distinct and separate incidents. That the first incident was over, and that was clear from the way you described it, Shawn. And then the second incident began. However, when the attorney was analyzing the situation, he said that what Fletcher did would not be viewed under the law as initiating or instigating the second confrontation. I’m not sure I completely agree with that. You chose the word provoke early on when you were describing this, maybe poked or prompted. Provoked has a very clear, obvious legal consequence.

 

Shawn Vincent:

Provocateur.

 

Don West:

Exactly. And I think it may be a lot closer to provoking rather than just prodding or poking. It was clear at that point that Fletcher wasn’t done yet even though she’d been the victim of this vandalism and threats and slicing of the tires and that they had this long history that had escalated to violence, gun pointing and stuff. When they finally walked away, Fletcher still wasn’t done. So, I think at that point, a legal question will be, “Did she invite the secondary confrontation when she wound up shooting Norton through the window of the door?” And while Norton may very well have posed a threat, a clear threat at that point, either with a knife or a rock or both, as Fletcher was in the car, and by many accounts including this lawyer’s, at that point in time, Fletcher may have had the legal right to use deadly force to avoid that perceptively a deadly force attack with the rock or the knife.

 

I think a real question will be what led up to that was, in fact, Fletcher really the initiator of that second phase of violence. And if so, if she’s construed to be having initiated that by talking about getting “clapped,” having a gun, being almost provoking the second wave of violence, I think she’s in big trouble. Even if at the moment the trigger was pulled, you could clearly argue it was self-defense.

 

Shawn Vincent:

And Steve, I’m wondering from your perspective as you researched this case, to Don’s point there, it’d be hard to know whether that was her intention to provoke just on what we see there. But when we add to it, Steve, that they’ve got this ongoing beef, that they actually have legal drama between them and they’ve been at odds. Does that add to your perception of what’s going on here between reasonable fear and some sort of anger at this ongoing grudge?

 

Steve Moses:

To some extent, doing my best to try to put my, be in her shoes. It might’ve been she had to get out that last smart aleck remark to show that she had nothing to fear and they were lucky and they did not perhaps respond as she thought. So, she is in her vehicle. I’m not sure if she had the option to drive away even as they were pounding on the vehicle, breaking out the window. I do not know. The car could have been parked. It could have been in reverse and she could have backed right out of there. 

 

The thing that strikes me is perhaps: at what distance and in what parts of the anatomy were the two victims shot? So, in terms of maybe she had the option at that point to point that gun at them or even show them the gun and tell them to get away, or she would shoot and they stayed there and she shot, or perhaps they reacted to it. If you’ve got that on video and they are what appears to be retreating from the scene, she went ahead and shot anyway, I mean, that could have all factored into it. So, without just knowing all the particulars and where they were shot and the distances, I’m just a little bit unsure. Something I’d also mention to you, just based upon some observations from some of the other shootings, prior shootings we observed. In some instances, people might very well think, “Okay, I’ve had a grudge with this person. This person is putting themselves in a position where I can lawfully shoot them and I’m going to take advantage of it.” So that’s always a potential scenario.

 

Don West:

That’s a pretty good observation in this case, perhaps because Fletcher was indicted for aggravated murder. So, the prosecutor is taking a very dim view of her choices and her decisions in this process. They wouldn’t have had to have indicted her for aggravated murder. It could have been a lower form of murder or manslaughter perhaps. But my guess is they are setting up their case to suggest that she provoked the second violence and may very well have already decided she was looking for a chance to shoot Norton if she had one.

 

Shawn Vincent:

Well, and can we talk about her demeanor a little bit? Don, did you get a chance to look at those videos?

 

Don West:

I did.

 

Shawn Vincent:

Yeah. And so, her tone or voice is pretty calm even when she’s saying she’s got a gun. And then, I think by getting out of the car and having more words with them when they were walking away, I think not only does that bring up an issue of whether or not she was the provocateur legally in this, but it also demonstrates she’s not particularly afraid of her, right?

 

Don West:

Mm-hmm.

 

Shawn Vincent:

If she was truly in fear that this person meant her great bodily harm or death and they were walking away and she had the opportunity to put her car in reverse and get out of there, don’t you think a prosecutor is going to make that point?

 

Don West:

Well, I think so. And you can add to that the presence of mind to record it. So, she’s putting all of this for posterity as if to prove her point, right? As if to say, “This is what I did, this is what they did.” And then pretty soon it gets to the point that “I had no choice. I had to shoot. I was being attacked.”

 

Shawn Vincent:

Yeah. And on that point of “I had to shoot,” if people go and see the video and we’ll post it on the website, I’ll add a link to it so people can check it out. And Steve, you touched on this a little bit. It’s objectively, I think terrifying to have somebody smashing out your windows.

 

Steve Moses:

Absolutely.

 

Shawn Vincent:

But you’d mentioned an option is to just get out of there in your car, and so we’ll entertain the notion that maybe she had dropped her keys or the car wouldn’t start or something, maybe that’s true. We don’t know that, but I don’t think that’s true. And we’ve seen before where people are in the situation and maybe it doesn’t occur to them that this is a possibility or they’re just so panicked they don’t do it … or maybe in this case if they had a beef, she wanted the reason to stay and use her firearm. But I don’t see a big obstacle in getting that car started. Especially now if it’s, like in the Perry case where the person’s got an assault rifle and they’re walking up to your car. There’s not a lot of time to make choices there. 

 

Steve Moses:

But when this person, they’ve already had this engagement for a little while, it wasn’t obvious at all that she had a firearm or anything. She may have had a rock, maybe a knife, but you’re in your car. It seems like she might have enough time to hit the gas on that thing and get out of there if she thought about it. And that’s just something that we need to, that’s just a lesson we need to learn from this particular case is if something like this is potentially going to take place that involves me, what are some of my options? And sometimes, there’s so much more obvious than we give any thought to, because in many instances it’s like, well, I’m parked here, or maybe there’s a car in front of me, or maybe I’m going to have to back out and maybe I might bump into another car and people just don’t take that into consideration.

 

Don West:

My mother used to say, “Nothing’s ever a complete waste of time because it can always be used as a bad example.”

 

Shawn Vincent:

Yeah.

 

Don West:

I think there’s lots and lots of bad examples in this case, but there’s some good ones too that we can pull out for some of the responsible concealed carriers. And The idea of frozen feet is one of them, right, Steve? I think that’s what you’re talking about is it’s not necessarily a purposeful, intentional decision to stand your ground as you may be legally allowed to do. There’s some sort of emotional or psychological thing that happens that prevents you from thinking about getting away or taking those first couple of steps that you can safely take to avoid a deadly force encounter. And I’ve seen that in other situations too, where it’s compounded, of course, when you’re in a duty-to-retreat state and you have the legal obligation. But as we always say, even if you are legally allowed to stand your ground, that’s usually not the first best choice. If you can get away, you get away.

 

But I think from what we’ve seen in lots of other cases is people that had clear opportunities, maybe the window was closing, but they had some clear opportunities just to drive away or run away or do something to gain more distance, to gain more time, they don’t. And I don’t think it’s necessarily because they are intentionally choosing not to as much as it’s that phenomenon you’re talking about, the frozen foot kind of thing.

 

Steve Moses:

Well, it’s just kind of a human reaction is to, “I don’t know what to do, so I’m going to think about it.” But you don’t have a lot of time to think about it. It’s always good to have made that decision in advance that if this happens, I’m going to do this. But by the same token, in most instances, at least for me, I like to think whatever I’m going to do is going to be, I’m going to improve my position. If that means I need to protect a third party, I’m going to move towards them. If I’m the one that’s being threatened, I’m going to move away from them. One of the things I really like about that is that in many instances, it causes the other person to be taken aback. They had not contemplated that. So now they have to go through that whole OODA loop.

 

Shawn Vincent:

Do I chase them? Do I chase that?

 

Steve Moses:

Yeah. Yes. And that kind of gives you an advantage. And the other thing, as we’ve discussed before is that if I attempt to go around, increase distance, back up and the other person is then aggressing upon me, I’ve pretty much disambiguated the situation. I need to give you guys a dollar for every time I use that.

 

Shawn Vincent:

I love it. It feels good to say it, doesn’t it?

 

Steve Moses:

It’s freeing. It’s freeing. But it says, okay, okay, well, now I know I really do have a problem, and I can articulate that to third parties.

 

Shawn Vincent:

Yeah. I’m going to have an honest moment right now. I was … probably inadvertently cut somebody off in bad traffic on a rainy night and got up to a stoplight, and the guy got out of his car and came over to my driver’s side window sort of banging on the window and threatening me. I didn’t hear everything he said, but he was cussing and he was mad, and I felt like he wanted to hurt me and I wanted to hurt him back. I had an emotional response that I wanted to get away, but I had this fantasy in my mind of really quick opening the door while I was powering away. So, I’d slam into him and hurt him. And luckily, I knew right away that’s a terrible idea.

 

And I saw, even though I was at a red light, I saw that I had a clearing and I just got out of there. And you’re right, he was shocked that I had left. That was not something he thought I was going to do. And a moment … it was dark, I got away before he could probably even have followed me and gotten back into his car and figured out who I was as it was dark. And I avoided that circumstance. But I was surprised for days at how powerful my instinct to hurt him was. And you introduced me to this idea of being “emotionally hijacked,” and it happens to people in traffic all the time. And just like you were saying, Steve, that you have to, I think a lot of what we do with these conversations is so that our audience can imagine these circumstances and think about what would I do before it happens so that if somebody comes up to their window and then make a quick assessment, “Okay, this person is not armed with a firearm, I can just get out of here.”

 

And that’s one of the first options that come to their head because they think of it, then maybe they’ll take that option. And likewise, if they entertain the fact that they’ll be shocked and angry and have a revenge instinct when this happens, then you can help prevent yourself from being emotionally hijacked too.

 

Don West:

Well, we see far too many road rage-type cases where there’s this exchange of bad driving and gestures and mouthing cuss words on the road. And then a little while later, both people pull off to the side and one gets out of the car and approaches the other, and it just leads oftentimes to disaster when none of that ever needed to occur. There’s plenty of opportunities just to disengage. And there was, those cases have their own, maybe short-lived, but there is some emotional baggage that goes along with those decisions to pull off, engage. And I think in our case today with Norton and Fletcher, they have not just the emotional baggage from that day, but it goes back weeks and weeks.

 

I think that Fletcher had been accused of smashing the windows on Norton’s car earlier. We know there had been some gunpointing. They’d been to court. I think Fletcher may have had a “stay-away order” from Norton. Norton approaches Fletcher’s smashed window with a rock and maybe a knife knowing full well that Fletcher has a gun and has been taunting her saying, “You’re lucky you don’t get clapped.” And that’s not enough for Norton to say, “Maybe I should be the one that leaves at this point. But no, I’ll re-engage. I’ll go up to the window of her car with a big rock that I’d already used to smash the windows of her car and confront her again.” So, this is predictably, I think that emotional arc that we see that starts as simply on the highway as somebody cutting somebody off and it just escalates.

 

Shawn Vincent:

So, since you mentioned their ongoing tit-for-tat feud, I think they seem like unreasonable people. But I’ve also seen otherwise reasonable people have a feud with a neighbor or a daughter’s never-do-well boyfriend who keeps coming around, and somehow there’s this antagonism that goes, and that is going to become a factor if there’s a lethal engagement, right? If you defend yourself against somebody that you’ve had an ongoing feud with, a prosecutor is going to look at that, the investigator’s going to look at that and they’re going to be suspicious. And I think that means that as an armed defender, you have to be even extra careful of those circumstances if you realize how it’s going to look.

 

Don West:

I think that’s well said, and that I think as a result of the history, I think that Ms. Fletcher is in a lot of trouble in this case, even though if you cut it up into small pieces, you could say she did act or have a reasonable basis to believe that she was an imminent fear of great bodily harm or death at the hands of Ms. Norton and the rock at the moment, they were face to face through the driver’s window of the car. There’s so much history and so much antagonism and so many opportunities for this not to happen that I think that because in fact, it was Fletcher that had the gun and used it to cause the death of Norton, that she’s not being looked favorably upon by the prosecution. They charged her with a top count, holding her what, without bail, I think you said?

 

Shawn Vincent:

Yeah, yeah.

 

Don West:

Or at least she’s in jail and can’t make bail. And I’ve had enough association with cases in Ohio to know she could very well be there for two years before she ever gets to trial if this is ultimately where it goes. And yeah, it’s sad, it’s a tragic case. I do want to point out that we don’t know why Norton died other than it appears that it must have been as a result of having been shot. We know that she lived what, for about six weeks?

 

Shawn Vincent:

Yeah, that’s my reflection from the reporting.

 

Don West:

I’ve had cases, I’ve been involved in cases where my client was accused of shooting someone who did not die immediately, but died several weeks later.

 

Shawn Vincent:

Yeah. Now, it’s about homicide.

 

Don West:

Yeah. In one particular instance, in one particular case, I’m thinking of the person died from a blood clot, a deep vein thrombosis that was associated with the hospitalization caused by getting shot, but the gunshot didn’t in fact cause the death other than by consequence of the medical treatment.

 

Shawn Vincent:

Right.

 

Don West:

If there’s clearly separate identifiably, separate causation, it would be known as a superseding intervening cause. And I’m not even sure medical malpractice would rise to the level of preventing it from being a criminal homicide if someone dies. But it has to be so distinct and so separate that it couldn’t even be foreseeable as a consequence of the original gunshot injury to be any kind of defense. And of course, I point that out because Fletcher is in a whole lot more trouble because Norton died than had she gone to the hospital and spent six weeks there, but ultimately survived. That’s the difference between life and prison and a few years probably.

 

Shawn Vincent:

Right. And maybe as one of our final notes on this, Don, can we agree from a legal perspective that if you recorded yourself committing a homicide, or she didn’t know it was a homicide yet, shooting somebody or two people, maybe you take that to a lawyer and get some advice first before you post it on Facebook and send it to the press. Maybe that’s a better way to handle that.

 

Don West:

I mean, tagging the news station with it to be sure there’s no way they could have missed it, right?

 

Shawn Vincent:

Yeah. Well, and here’s my point: clearly she knew that she was a suspect in this and that she may be facing legal repercussions. They hadn’t arrested her yet. But as a lawyer, before charges even come, there’s mitigation that a lawyer could do, right?

 

Don West:

I think this is probably a fairly good representation of how people get so convinced that they’re right, that they didn’t do anything wrong, that they were completely justified–that not only are they more than willing to step up and say, “Yes, I was the one involved,” but they want to broadcast it to the world, in this case literally.

 

“Look what I did. See how right I was. See what she did to me. See how she made me do it,” kind of thing. And to answer your question, of course, that was a foolish, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid thing to record it and then to send it out. But of course, I do think though, that I’ve seen people, I’ve received calls from people that have been in trouble, that are shocked, absolutely shocked during our conversations, or I suggest there may have been a couple of different things to try before firing the gun, whether firing it up in the air or whatever you’re doing with it. But nonetheless, there’s other ways to approach solving the problem than by shooting at somebody.

 

Shawn Vincent:

Steve, did you have any final thoughts on this case?

 

Steve Moses:

Well, I was just thinking about that old saying, “If it’s not safe to go somewhere without a gun, it’s not safe to go there with a gun.” In this case, if it’s not safe to say something without a gun, it’s not safe to say something with a gun.

 

Shawn Vincent:

So, you’re suggesting that she may have had a little bit more courage in confronting this enemy of hers because she knew she was packing.

 

Steve Moses:

She might’ve thought she was in power.

 

Shawn Vincent:

All right, everybody, that’s the podcast for today. I appreciate you listening through to the end. I’ve got a whole pile of conversations that I’ve recorded with Don and Steve. I’ll be editing them down over the next weeks, can’t wait to show them to you. Until then, as always, be smart, stay safe, and take care.