Prosecutors: Alexander fired in anger

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – For the first time in the long and controversial case of Marissa Alexander, prosecutors are giving News4Jax details of the fact in that the public has never heard, and it paints a much darker picture of the 34-year-old woman's actions the August 2010 day she fired at her husband and his two children.

The two assistant state attorneys who prosecuted Alexander over the last few years said Alexander repeatedly lied to cover her tracks.

Prosecutors Rich Mantei and London Kite said that rather than running out of the closest door to get away from her husband she said was abusing her, Alexander walked from room to room to get her gun. They insist she was angry, not afraid.

"She could have left out the back. She could have gone out the front. She goes around room No. 1, the kitchen, then small laundry room. That's number three," Kite said. "(She) doubles back... goes into the kitchen, and now bypassed an exit."

Kite said Alexander (pictured below) could have escaped, but didn't, and the evidence just doesn't support the story that Alexander has told for four years.

Assistant State Attorney London Kite

"We have a man and his two young children calling for help because they just got shot at and a woman held up inside a house with a loaded firearm, calling her mom, her sister, her brother -- everyone except the people she should have been calling: 911," Kite said. "And if she had simply looked out her front window, there were all those police," Kite said.

Prosecutors said Alexander testified she couldn't find her phone -- which she was clearly using.

"In the first trial she was looking for it; it was under clothes. It wasn't true; it was in her hand," Kite said. "She was concocting this story that everyone had latched onto that we now know was just not true," Kite said.

UNCUT VIDEO: Interview with Assistant State Attorneys Rich Mantei and London Kite

Prosecutors also said she never told police that day that she had been threatened.

"She said the only thing Rico Gray did was snatch open the door and he yelled, which he admitted to he was angry," Kite said. "That's why we've always contended that she shot out of anger."

Prosecutors said the travesty of the case is that no one seemed to care about the real victims, Rico and his two young children.

Now 15, Pernell Gray sent a hand-written letter to the court and testified at Tuesday's sentencing hearing.

"That young boy at 10 years experiencing a gunshot for the very first time, and hopefully the last. A boy running for his life and the defendant with a gun in her hand telling him to get the f*** out of the house. That wasn't the loving, caring mother that we have known all these years," Kite said.

With supporters of Alexander chanting outside the courthouse that black lives matter, Pernell was inside the courtroom to say his life matters. Prosecutors say that he's felt from the beginning that no one seems to care about what happened to him. 


About the Author:

Jennifer, who anchors The Morning Shows and is part of the I-TEAM, loves working in her hometown of Jacksonville.