Man found not guilty of murder in 2015 shooting death of mom of 2
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – A jury Thursday found a 23-year-old Indianapolis man not guilty on murder and robbery counts in the 2015 fatal shooting of a woman who was unloading groceries from her car, a defense attorney and online court records said.
The jury found Tafari Clay guilty on a charge he had admitted he did: unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon. He was convicted in 2012 of robbery.
Marion Superior Court, Criminal Division 1, took the jury’s finding under advisement and set a sentencing hearing for Aug. 31. A spokesman for the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office said Friday that Clay’s conviction on the charge of unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon carries a sentencing range of 2-12 years.
Clay faces another jury trial Aug. 20 on two murder charges and a robbery charge in a case filed in June 2016.
Hilary Acton, 33, of Clayton, was shot multiple times and killed about 1:15 a.m. June 1, 2015, in the 1400 block of South East Street. That’s in the city’s Bates-Hendricks neighborhood just south of the I-65/I-70 South Split.
Acton, who was with her boyfriend, was shot while unloading grocery bags from her car across the street from a Village Pantry convenience store.
Michelle Wall, Clay’s attorney, said Clay told jurors he did not fire the fatal shots although Acton’s boyfriend, Mark Williams, had identified him as the shooter. The attorney had raised questions about Williams’ state of mind after the shooting and his memory of the events. Clay said he did fire his gun toward Williams, but that another man fired the fatal shots, the attorney said.
That man was identified during the trail as Eron Bonner, 23, who is in the Marion County Jail on a murder charge in another case filed in January 2016. Bonner gained media coverage after a murder charge against him was dropped in 2014. That charge was in connection to the July 4, 2013, shooting death of 16-year-old on a downtown sidewalk outside Circle Centre mall.
Bonner was not charged in Acton’s death.
Hours after her death in 2015, strangers and neighbors stood together near Terrace Avenue and South East Street for a prayer vigil to remember the mother of two boys and to pray for justice.
At that vigil, Acton’s boyfriend told News 8 that he was with her when two men with guns approached them and asked them to hand everything over.
“They just kept shooting at me, and I didn’t even know she was hit,” Williams said. “They come up and they say, ‘Hey, we’re going to need all that.’ I was like, ‘What? My Goodwill clothes and my $102?’ I was like, ‘Hey, there’s nothing here.’ I yelled for my brother, he lives right here. I knew he was in the back of the house. They just started shooting.”
Williams described Acton as the love of his life and said they had been together for about a year and that she was a loving and caring person.
“She loved her kids. She was just really trying to get herself together and put something together that’s meaningful,” Williams said in 2015.
