NATCHEZ — Jurors apparently didn’t find the testimony of a co-defendant who told them he was part of a shooting incident that killed a 16-year-old compelling enough to convict Eddie Minor Tuesday.

Minor, 18, was on trial for the Dec. 29, 2014, robbery and shooting death of Jessie Taylor. Judge Forrest “Al” Johnson declared a mistrial after the jurors came back after a little more than two hours of deliberation and told the court they were deadlocked.

The jury foreman told Johnson the jurors were split 10-2 on the armed robbery charge and 9-3 on the murder charge. All but two of the jurors told the judge they did not think further deliberations would be fruitful.

The co-defendant, Emanuel Latham Jr. — who is being tried separately — was the only eyewitness that could link Minor as a triggerman in Taylor’s death.

Latham told the court he had gone to a Beaumont Street residence after a call from Minor earlier that evening, and Taylor — after riding up on a bicycle and greeting everybody on the scene with handshakes — had asked for a stick of synthetic marijuana.

The three walked down the street, with Minor slightly ahead, and when they got to a residence Minor told Taylor to wait on the porch, Latham said, and once inside Latham waited in the living room while Minor went into the back of the house, producing two guns and handing one, a semi-automatic, to Latham. Minor kept a revolver.

When he asked what he was supposed to do with the gun, Latham said Minor told him to follow his lead, and — exiting the house — Minor pointed the gun at Taylor and told him to “give up everything.”

Taylor emptied his pockets and tried to walk away, Latham said, but Minor grabbed his shirt and tried to take a gun Taylor was carrying.

“Mr. Taylor turned around and knocked his hand around, they got into a tussle, and Eddie Minor pushed him off and Jessie Taylor tried to walk away,” Latham said, saying Taylor hopped a concrete wall into an alley next to the residence.

“When we made it to the alley, Taylor was walking off really fast, (and) Eddie Minor shot by his foot and he started running, and as he was running he reached to receive his gun. His gun looked like it was stuck between his waist and his pants.”

Minor shot again, and Taylor grabbed his backside as if he had been hit, finally freeing the gun and firing one shot as he continued fleeing, Latham said.

“After he fired that shot, it seemed like the bullet came past my head, so I got scared and pulled my gun out and started shooting,” he said. “I started shooting. I pulled the trigger until the gun stopped shooting.”

Latham said Minor did not fire wildly during the exchange.

“He was shooting, and when his hand would come up, he would wait until it come down to shoot again,” he said.

Latham said once he had emptied the magazine of his weapon he fled the scene, running to Wallace Court, but after Minor followed him and called his name they returned to Beaumont Street.

Minor told him to take Taylor’s bicycle, Latham said, but after picking it up he put it back on the ground, running when he saw police lights, briefly hiding under a house before making his way back home, a trip punctuated by phone calls as people heard about the shooting.

“I got a call from Eddie Minor; he asked me where I was, and when I asked him where he was he was talking real low and I couldn’t understand him, so I hung up,” Latham said. “People was calling my phone, asking me if I knew about someone getting shot on Beaumont Street.”

When Minor’s defense attorney, Carmen Brooks questioned Latham, she honed in on his reason for testifying, several times saying his charges were on the verge of being dismissed — an assertion Latham and the prosecution disputed.

“Your lawyer isn’t here and you are on the witness stand confessing to two crimes, basically, but you expect this jury to believe you haven’t been promised anything?” she said.

The truth of the matter was, Brooks said, Latham shot Taylor.

“You shot Jessie while he was running away,” she said. “And I know why you don’t want to say that, because you have a lot to lose.”

When Brooks asked Latham why phone records didn’t corroborate his story about Minor calling him, Latham said it was because the police had subpoenaed the wrong phone records.

“When (Investigator Otis Mazique) asked for my phone number, I didn’t know if he was asking for my phone or my mama’s phone, so I gave him my mama’s phone,” Latham said.

Brooks likewise sought to undermine Latham’s testimony by pointing out its inconsistencies between the statements he gave to police in the initial days after the shooting and his testimony Tuesday.

“When I wrote that statement, I was just trying to get out of the police station,” he said.

Witnesses also included Kateriria Noble, whose testimony largely focused on the happenings at the residence where the three boys initially met up. Noble’s testimony didn’t contradict Latham’s — who she called Little Carl — but she said after the boys walked off no one saw what happened down the street. The others at the first residence had gone inside, and did not run outside until hearing gunshots fired 10 to 15 minutes later, she said.

“That was when Jessie started limping down the street, started running with a limp — you could tell he had been shot,” Noble said. “That is when Little Carl started shooting at Jessie.”

Adding to the chaos, another man in the area ran into a yard and started shooting into the air, she said.

“Jessie was laid up down the street, bleeding and crying for help, and that is when the police came,” she said.

During the gunfire, Noble never saw Minor shoot, she said, because a building obscured his position — or at least where she believed he was.

Detective Felicia Fleming also testified about the procedural elements of the investigation, including that two young women had gone to the police and given crime stoppers tips.

One of those witnesses, Pernikqua Champ, was the subject of an at-times impassioned exchange between the defense and Judge Forrest “Al” Johnson while the jury was not in the courtroom.

Brooks said the defense had intended to call Champ, who is Minor’s sister, as a witness to rebut Mazique’s testimony that the crime stoppers tipsters had not made written statements, but the prosecutors objected on the grounds they had not been notified she would be called as a witness.

What complicated the matter further was Champ had been in the courtroom for Tuesday’s proceedings. Brooks contended it should not have been a problem since she had not been present for the testimony Monday she would be rebutting.

Brooks said the first time she found out about Champ’s reported written statement was during a break Tuesday when Champ had approached her to find out if she would be used as a witness.

After a lengthy exchange, Johnson said he would allow the testimony but he was upset with Brooks that she had not notified the court that her potential witness — who had been sequestered Monday — had been in the courtroom and heard other testimony Tuesday.

“What I am hearing is there is a witness you thought might be a witness, (then) you thought not, and then there was this conversation,” Johnson said. “You didn’t say anything to anybody, you let this go along and then you called this witness without advising anybody.”

Brooks said she may have done the procedure wrong, “but it was not intentional.”

In an interview with Johnson outside the jury’s presence, Champ said she gave a written statement to police about the shooting at her mother’s behest after she had been advised to submit her tip through Crime Stoppers, a call she made from inside the police station.

Champ said her statement was that she had seen Latham shooting that night.

The written statement was made to an officer Champ only could name as “Benjamin,” and was not admitted into evidence in the end. Brooks said the exclusion of the written statement was a discovery violation, but District Attorney Ronnie Harper said he’d never seen it either.

Brooks ultimately decided not to call Champ because Johnson said she would be subject to cross-examination on a wide range of her knowledge about the case and not just about the statement.

In his closing arguments, Assistant District Attorney Tim Cotton reminded the jury Minor could be convicted if he was acting in concert with Latham, but, “We are not here to decide what Emanuel Latham did or did not do, he is still set for trial, and he has been offered nothing.”

Cotton said jurors would have to consider Latham’s credibility, and he may be lying.

“But guess what? He may be a 15-year-old individual who talked to long enough realizes he better tell the truth,” Cotton said. “We have all been around children who have been lying but then tell the truth.”

Brooks’ closing arguments focused on the credibility of the codefendant — “his testifying wouldn’t make sense unless he knew those charges were all but resolved, the only thing was left to do is sign the paper” — but also on the extent of the investigation, especially the work done by Mazique.

“He did little to no investigation,” Brooks said. “You heard him (Monday). He talked to a few people, he picked up some shell casings, and then it was New Year’s Eve, and he was done — that was it.”

“Otis and the Natchez Police Department did not make one effort to recover those guns. That is despicable. They issued not one search warrant. We all know to do that, and we just watch TV.”

In particular, the move to have witnesses who wanted to make statements call Crime Stoppers is troubling, she said.

“What did the eyewitnesses say to Otis that made him not want to put that statement on file?” Brooks said. “You could only assume that what that person said would hurt him.”

The jury should acquit Minor and send the case back to the police to be reopened, Brooks said.

“My client will get no do-overs,” she said. “What you do will decide his fate. You can’t go home and prepare your Thanksgiving dinner and then it hits you, ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’ But the NPD can reopen that case and investigate it properly. Jessie Taylor deserves that.”

Brooks also appealed to Taylor’s dying statement to police, that he was robbed but didn’t have any money.

“Jessie Taylor said he did not have any money, and when you consider what Emanuel Latham says, one of them lied,” she said. “Was Jessie Taylor lying as he laid there in a puddle of blood, saying he didn’t have any money, or was Emanuel Latham lying? You are the judges of the fact.”

Harper responded that cases like this one always include an attack on the investigation.

“This case is assassinating the character of Otis Mazique,” he said. “They want you to believe he is out running around concealing evidence, fabricating evidence so he can go out and celebrate New Year’s Eve.”

But Mazique and others did police work and weren’t able to find other witnesses to the crime, Harper said, and Latham’s statement could be considered credible in part because he admitted to being part of the incident.

Johnson said the matter can be reset for trial again at a later date.

Minor was remanded to the custody of the Adams County Sheriff’s Office after the mistrial was declared.