A Chatham County inmate testified on Wednesday that Shan Cheley told him Amber DeLoach was “choked to death,” but adamantly denied either killing or raping her.
“He told me that she was choked to death,” Michael Burnett, a U.S. Army soldier awaiting sentencing in a Long County case, told jurors.
Burnett testified in Chatham County Superior Court that he was incarcerated with defendant Cheley for about a year and they talked every day.
According to Burnett, Cheley said he met DeLoach outside Pour Larry’s, where she asked him for a cigarette, then for drugs. They smoked crack cocaine at his house and “started having sex,” he said the defendant told him.
Cheley told him he later drove them in the victim’s rented Dodge Avenger to Yamacraw Village to get his car and they split up there when Cheley went to get gas for his car.
While Cheley admitted having consensual “rough sex” with the victim he adamantly denied having raped her, Burnett told Cheley’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Robert Attridge, on cross-examination.
DeLoach, 18, was found slain in the trunk of a burning black Dodge Avenger early Sept. 30, 2012, in an area off West Oglethorpe Avenue in Yamacraw Village.
Cheley, 37, is charged with murder, rape, aggravated assault, assault and arson in the case. He has pleaded not guilty.
A jury of six men and six women recessed about 3:15 p.m. Wednesday and were to return to court before Chatham County Superior Court Judge Timothy R. Walmsley at 9:30 a.m. today to resume testimony.
Prosecutors Jennifer Guyer and Christy Barker are expected to complete their main case today.
Burnett, a private first class who appeared in court in his military fatigues and declaring himself “still in the U.S. Army,” is one of four Fort Stewart soldiers accused of being part of FEAR — Forever Enduring Always Ready, a group prosecutors said stockpiled assault weapons and plotted anti-government attacks, including killing President Barack Obama and blowing up the fountain in Savannah’s Forsyth Park.
Burnett, 28, pleaded guilty in August 2012 to a reduced charge and agreed to testify against the others. He has been held in the local jail for two years, he said.
Burnett conceded that he hoped to “get a benefit” at sentencing in his case in return for his testimony in the Cheley case.
Also Wednesday, former Chatham County Jail inmate Patrick George told prosecutors and the jury that Cheley told him “it wouldn’t have never went down like that had he not been getting high … on powder cocaine.”
He said the defendant “started crying” when discussing his role in the slaying and admitted he had wiped down the car with rags and “lit it on fire.”
Prosecutors contend Cheley set fire to the vehicle with the victim in the trunk after purchasing $3 in gasoline from a nearby BP station. A medical examiner testified Tuesday DeLoach was dead before the fire.
Cheley did not specifically say if the victim was in the car but said the crimes didn’t happen there, George said.
In other testimony Wednesday, Georgia Bureau of Investigation forensic expect Barbara Retzner told jurors that blood stains from a carpet at Cheley’s home at 10 Little Country Place were a DNA match for Amber DeLoach and that a rape kit specimen taken from the victim matched Cheley’s on 12 of 15 points.
Amber DeLoach’s DNA also was found in one of two blue-plaid slippers found outside the burned Dodge Avenger in Yamacraw Village where the victim’s body was discovered, Retzner testified.