The trial of Issiah Mekki Ross, a 21-year-old black male formerly of Mebane who is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of two teens in Mebane in September 2022, got off to an emotional start Wednesday morning in Orange County superior court in Hillsborough.
An apparent family member of one of the victims who was seated in the courtroom gallery as the trial got underway began sobbing uncontrollably when Orange County assistant district attorney Anna Orr recounted how Lyric Woods, 14, white, female, of Efland, had been shot in the neck twice at close range during the early morning of Saturday, September 17, 2022, after sneaking out of the house late that preceding Friday night. Her friend, Devin Clark, 18, black, male of Mebane, was a little older, so it wasn’t unusual for him to spend weekends with his friends, Orr outlined during her opening statement Wednesday morning.
During a hearing prior to jury selection on Monday, visiting superior court judge Stephanie Reese of Guilford County granted three motions: a motion to join the charges into one trial; a motion to sequester some of the witnesses; and Ross’ motion to argue self-defense.
Also on Monday, Ross rejected a plea deal that would’ve reduced the charges from two counts of first-degree murder to two counts of second-degree murder, potentially lowering the maximum sentence to between 40 and 50 years in prison. Ross, who was 17 when he allegedly murdered Clark and Woods in 2022, faces two sentences of life in prison if convicted.
A state statute that governs first- and second-degree murder stipulates that a defendant who was under age 18 at the time of the crime cannot be sentenced to death; and a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Roper v. Simmons) held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits a death sentence for a defendant who is convicted of a capital defense committed prior to age 18.
Ross will be tried by a jury comprised of: eight white males, three white females, and one black male. Two females and white male have been selected to serve as alternate jurors.
A freshman at Cedar Ridge High School in Hillsborough, Woods was shot twice in the neck at close range, sustaining a total of seven gunshots, including in her back, shortly before 2:00 a.m. on Saturday, September 17, Orr said during her opening statement.
Woods had contacted Clark that night asking for a ride, based on a timeline of the events previously outlined by Orange County sheriff Charles Blackwood. Clark had been a student at Eastern Alamance High School, where Ross had also been enrolled.
Parents recount last time they saw their children
Woods had gone with her mother and her younger sister to get ice cream earlier in the evening of Friday, September 16, her mother Elizabeth Cannada testified Wednesday morning. After telling her parents goodnight, Lyric said she was going to take a shower, Cannada testified, adding, “I told her not to take an hour-and-a-half because she always took long showers.” Fighting back tears, she testified Wednesday morning that she last saw Lyric around 11:00 p.m. that Friday night.
The next morning, she sent her younger sister to wake Lyric up because they were planning to decorate the house for fall, Cannada testified under direct examination by Orr. When the younger sister said Lyric wasn’t in her room, she thought Lyric might be hiding as a joke, but then thought that wasn’t like her, so she started contacting other family members to see if Lyric was with one of them. Woods’ parents reported her missing on Saturday, September 17.
The defense opted not to cross-examine Woods’ mother, Cannada.
Clark sustained five gunshot wounds, including one to the back of his head, Orr said in her opening statement.
Investigators later recovered more than a dozen shell casings from the scene, all of which were found to have been fired from the same 9mm handgun.
Ross is accused of murdering Clark and Woods off Buckhorn Road in Mebane, just over the Alamance County line in western Orange County, shortly before 2:00 a.m. Saturday, September 17, 2022.
Drug deal gone bad?
Defense attorney Jonathan Trapp of Raleigh suggested that his client had acted in self-defense amid an argument with Clark that night, while claiming that Clark shot Woods.
Text messages between Ross and Clark showed that they’d planned to meet up the night of September 16, and Clark had texted Ross, asking him for a ride and telling him he had drugs.
In one of the exchanges, Clark texted Ross, “Got wheels? I got money,” Trapp said during his opening statement. Clark texted Ross where he needed to drive, adding, “Turn your lights off when you get to the location,” Trapp said.
While Ross took his mother’s vehicle without permission, Clark took a 9mm handgun that belonged to his father that night, Trapp said in his opening statement. “Who was it that shot Devin Clark; who was it that shot Lyric Woods?” the defense attorney asked rhetorically.
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At some point, there was an argument, and finding himself with a gun turned on him, “Mr. Ross was left with a tough decision to save his own life,” Trapp said. “After this happened, Mr. Ross left the scene,” Trapp acknowledged.
Ross soon realized the vehicle he had taken from his mother was out of gas – by this point he was “freaking out,” based on Trapp’s description – and saw that he still had Devin’s phone, bag, and the gun. He tossed all of it out of the vehicle before driving to the Petro Travel Center along Buckhorn Road to get gas, where surveillance footage showed the vehicle backing into a concrete pillar, according to Trapp. When he got home, his mother, “seeing the vehicle had been damaged,” told Ross he couldn’t stay at her house, the defense attorney told jurors.
Ross was apprehended on October 5, 2022 by an FBI task force in Dover, Delaware, where he was believed to have been harbored by Nakaysha Ross, then 22, and McKenzie Mitchell, then 21, according to multiple media reports published at the time.
Clark’s father, Dexter Clark, Jr., acknowledged under cross-examination by Trapp Wednesday morning that he owned the 9 mm handgun, which he said he’d kept locked in a box in his closet. Clark said he is a member of a shooting club called Country Boys Therapy and would go shooting some weekends, and the 9mm was the gun that Devin would use.
Clark recalled Wednesday morning, as he fought back tears, that he had last seen Devin a few days before the weekend. “I laid down to go to sleep, and he was in his room.” Another one of his sons was there, and Devin got up and played with him a little bit before leaving the house. “[My son] said he didn’t think anything about it – it wasn’t anything strange,” Clark testified. He tried calling Devin a couple of times, and the call went straight to voice mail. “I didn’t want to think nothing was wrong, so I just pushed it to the side a little bit. He would leave with his friends but…nothing out of the ordinary,” Clark testified under direct examination by Orr.
Clark said he reported his son missing that Sunday afternoon, September 18. “I thought he was with his friends at first, because he wouldn’t go with just anybody. But then his friends started popping up, one by one, and he wasn’t with them.”
He filed a missing firearm report that evening, September 18, after realizing he hadn’t seen the gray and green handgun in a week or two, Dexter Clark testified Wednesday, as he fought back tears.
Orange County sheriff’s deputy Philip Susann testified Wednesday that he had been working patrol when he initially responded to Woods’ home to take the missing persons report that Saturday afternoon. The following day, on September 18, he was responding to a report of a downed tree when a call came over the radio saying two bodies had been located on Buckhorn Road, heading south toward the intersection with Yarborough Road.
“There were flies already around both their bodies,” Susann testified, explaining that, based on his training, meant they’d been there a while.
Discovery of the victims’ bodies
Earlier Wednesday morning, jurors heard testimony from Joseph (“Joey”) Kiser, who now lives in Virginia, and Jordan Wilson of Mebane, who discovered the victims’ bodies off the power line easement. Kiser testified that he and his buddy, Wilson, hadn’t hunted in that area before and so they set up deer cameras, which they’d baited with deer corn a couple of weeks earlier and had planned to “re-bait” after lunch that Sunday afternoon, September 18.
“We pulled off the hardtop and went on the gravel,” Kiser recalled on the witness stand. “I kind of looked over and went, ‘oh, my gosh,’” when he spotted the bodies a few feet away. “I could see the young lady’s necklace [and what] appeared might be a brown spot on the young man. His pants were pulled down like he’d been [dragged].”
Kiser and Wilson both testified that they slowed down but didn’t approach or touch the bodies before making a U-turn to go back to Wilson’s house to call 911.
“[Joey] kind of had an eerie sound to his voice,” Wilson testified under direct examination by Orr. “My first thought was what do we do because, if they’re deceased, we might be in danger, too.” After calling 911, Wilson and Kiser were instructed to return to the scene, and around 3:10 p.m. that Sunday afternoon, pointed the deputies who responded to the scene to where they’d seen the bodies.
Trapp later suggested that Susann – one of two deputies who were the first two to arrive on scene – or perhaps Wilson and Kiser, might’ve disrupted evidence by driving onto the gravel patch where 9mm brass shell casings were recovered.
That theory was punctured shortly afterward by body-worn camera footage – which was linked to his patrol car – introduced by Orr. The recording revealed that, at 3:10 p.m., Susann arrived on the scene and stopped his patrol car along Buckhorn Road, across from Yarborough Road, stopping short of the gravel drive. At no point had he driven onto the gravel drive leading to the power line easement where the victims’ bodies lay.
The first deputy to arrive on scene had already roped off the area with yellow crime scene tape, though he couldn’t have been there more than five or 10 minutes, Susann acknowledged under cross-examination by Trapp. A white pickup truck was parked at the entrance to the gravel drive, Susann said, adding that he wasn’t sure who it belonged to and that it was possible it could’ve have belonged to the “911 callers,” who’d been directed to return to the scene by dispatchers.
Also on Wednesday, jurors heard testimony from Orange County sheriff’s deputy Zack Baldwin, who processed the scene and evidence.
Baldwin described for jurors his initial observations upon arriving at the scene that sunny Sunday afternoon, along with the process he used to locate evidence; triangulate and map out the precise location of each piece of evidence investigators planned to collect; and inventory each item.
“[The victims’ bodies] were in a state of decay; bug bite was active,” Baldwin testified. “The overwhelming smell of decay indicated that they had been there quite a while.”
Court filings indicate that nine expert witnesses, including an FBI agent and forensic scientists, may be called.
During her opening statement, Orr told jurors that they will hear from a DNA expert who said that Woods’ blood had been recovered from the exterior of the vehicle the defendant had been driving at the time of the murders, a 2017 GMC Terrain that belonged to Ross’ mother.
On the night of September 18, an individual had called the Orange County sheriff’s office saying he had information, Orr told jurors. “He will tell you that the defendant confessed to killing Devin Clark and Lyric Woods,” the prosecutor said Wednesday.
The trial will resume at 9:30 a.m. today in Orange County superior court in Hillsborough and is expected to last up to two weeks.
