Shavon Randle’s mother told jurors she tried to call her daughter’s phone repeatedly in the frantic moments after the 13-year old’s kidnapping back in 2017.
Shaquana Persley is the last witness in the state case against Darius Fields who is charged with engaging in organized criminal activity.
“I called her back. I just kept on calling and then nobody ever answered the phone,” Persley said. “It just kept going straight to voicemail.”
Shavon received the cell phone as a gift for her 13th birthday just six days before her kidnapping.
Get top local stories in DFW delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC DFW's News Headlines newsletter.
Persley told jurors she had missed calls from Shavon’s phone and when she couldn’t connect with her daughter, her phone rang again. This time, Persley said Shavon’s aunt Roseina Randle told her Shavon had been kidnapped.
We just got to get there, we got to get there,” Persley told jurors through tears. “This can’t be true, like what is going on? We just had to get there.”
Prosecutors say Darius Fields is the leader of a drug crew that planned the kidnapping and murder of Shavon Randle back in 2017 as retaliation over a drug robbery two days earlier.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
The ensuing Amber Alert on June 28, 2017 triggered a massive police response to find her alive. Instead, three days later, one of her kidnappers Desmond Jones led police to her body - and the body of Michael Titus – at an abandoned drug house in Oak Cliff.
Jones received 99 years in prison after a Dallas County jury found him guilty in February 2020 of the same charge Fields faces now.
Earlier Monday, Jean Molina, a convicted felon serving a federal prison sentence on drug charges testified that Fields confided in him that he was responsible for Shavon’s murder.
Molina told jurors he spoke with Fields for about 20 minutes inside the Fannin County Jail in late July 2017, about three weeks after Fields was arrested at an Irving motel on weapons charges.
On cross-examination defense attorney Scottie Allen asked Molina if his client specifically told him he killed Randle.
“Whether he meant it literally or figuratively I’m not here to say which one it was but that’s what he said,” Molina responded.
No one has been charged in Shavon’s killing but if jurors find fields guilty on the organized crime charge, he faces life in prison.
Jurors are expected to hear closing arguments Tuesday.
