Monday, September 10, 2018

Poor Jessica Chambers was burned alive and her accused killer is going back to court.

Jessica Chambers was a former cheerleader who wanted to be a nurse.
She was 19 years old on December 6, 2014,  when she was found burned alive in a wooded area in Courtland, Mississippi.
She died at the hospital a few hours later.
Two hours before she was found, surveillance video showed her at a gas station nearby.
Ali Fadhel, a clerk at the gas station, said she put $14 dollars in instead of her usual $5.
He had asked her why she was putting so much in and she told him she was going somewhere.
Firefighters found her walking next to her burning car  around 8 p.m., with burns on 93% of her body.
She was wearing only underwear and walking in 40 degree temperatures.
Some first responders said she looked like a zombie and when asked who did this to her she responded "Eric" or "Derek".
However, with her injuries to her mouth and throat, doctors noted that it would have been difficult for her to properly say anything.
A year later, Quinton Tellis, 29, was indicted by a grand jury for capital murder in her death in February 2016.
He pled not guilty and went to trial in October 2017.
During the trial, prosecutors used cell phone records, surveillance videos and witness testimony to build their case.
Prosecutors say Jessica and Quinton spend early December 6, with a friend smoking marijuana and driving around.
Then Jessica brought him home to his house.
He texted her later asking for "some lovin".
Prosecutors allege that he asked her for sex and she turned him down a few times before.
Tellis told investigators that he had sex with Jessica on one prior occasion, but denied having sex with her the day she died.
He said he and Jessica met up later again that day to get fast food.
Prosecutors say that the couple had sex that evening in her car when Tellis suffocated her.
They did not present any evidence that they had sex or she was suffocated.
He thought that he had killed her.
Tellis then drove Jessica's car with her inside it to the back road, ran to his sister's house nearby, jumped in his  sister's car, stopped to pick up gasoline from a shed at his house and torched her car with her inside.
Prosecutors presented evidence that Jessica was burned and she had gasoline on her and down her throat and nose.
There was Tellis' DNA found on her car keys that were found along the path between Tellis' sister's home and the crime scene.
Cell phone location data showed that the two were together until around 7:30 p.m..
Surveillance video showed his sister's vehicle, stopping at his home  at 7:50 pm before driving towards the crime scene.
Footage also shows that he changed his clothes three times that day.
Within an hour of her death, Tellis deleted all text messages and communications with her from his phone.
The prosecutors present evidence that directly shows Tellis is the one that burned Jessica in her car.
Defense says that based on first responders testimony that a person named "Eric" or "Derek" should be on trial instead.
After 10 hours the jury could not  reach a unanimous verdict.
A retrial has been scheduled for September 24, of this year.
Tellis also faces another murder indictment in Louisiana, where he is accused in the torture death of Meing-Chn Hsiao.
She was a 34 year old Taiwanese graduate student at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
He was caught using her credit cards after her death.

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