‘They started shooting at me, I swear’: Jury sees taped interview during Whitfield trial Tuesday

Five days after Shaquita Kelly was shot and killed, Malcolm Whitfield sat for a police interview and admitted being at a fight in Streator – but said he wasn’t the instigator and he wasn’t carrying any gun.

And in a taped statement played Tuesday in La Salle County Circuit Court, the Streator man claimed that any shots fired on May 6, 2023, were aimed at him.

“They started shooting at me, I swear to God,” Whitfield said in the taped statement.

The lead investigator, Streator Police Sgt. Jason Moore, acknowledged that a gun certainly was pointed at Whitfield – “I know you got shot at,” Moore told him – but Moore then told Whitfield he didn’t buy his story of being unarmed.

“It’s not if you shot,” an off-screen investigator told him, “it’s why you shot.”

Whitfield, 31, also listed as a resident of DeKalb, is on trial this week charged with multiple felonies led by first-degree murder. While he and his lawyer are trying to cast doubt on witness statements implicating Whitfield in the fatal shooting, they also filed a motion indicating their intent to argue self-defense.

A La Salle County jury must sort it all out. If Whitfield is found to have shot Kelly and two survivors without justification, he’s likely going to prison for the rest of his life.

Tuesday, witnesses for the prosecution testified there actually were two shootings in Streator that night – and suggested the second one, in which Kelly died, may have been retaliatory.

Ryne Reel of Streator police testified he was, on May 6, 2023, assisting with a DUI stop when he heard “what sounded like gunshots” coming from the 100 block of North Bloomington Street. He arrived and found people dispersing but not willing to talk.

“We didn’t get much information out of them,” Reel testified.

Less than two hours later, there were more gunshots – this time from outside a two-story apartment complex in the 100 block of West Hickory Street.

There, Reel found two injured people on the ground, Shaquita Kelly and Breanna Anderson, and Emmett Williams standing nearby. All three had been shot. Kelly died during surgery.

Though Whitfield is alleged to have fired some rounds, the evidence presented so far suggests he couldn’t have fired all of them. Police retrieved shell casings of divergent color (brass and silver) and an analyst determined they were fired from different guns.

Public Defender Ryan Hamer spent part of Tuesday’s cross-examination trying to cast doubt, based on the location of the recovered casings, on whether Whitfield fired the fatal shots or even took aim at any of the victims.

Hamer also got several witnesses to acknowledge the scene was “chaotic.”

One of the guns fired may actually have been handled by shooting victim Emmett Williams, who is in custody awaiting separate (but potentially related) felony firearm charges in La Salle County. From the stand, Reel theorized Williams was aiming at a vehicle driven by Rachael Carter, a lesser actor in the shooting.

Carter and Whitfield were apprehended and questioned in Memphis five days after Kelly died. Carter, according to open-court statements, apparently implicated Whitfield. She pleaded guilty to ancillary charges and served part of a four-year sentence.

Whitfield insisted to police that a trip to Memphis was planned and that he hadn’t fled any murder investigation. Nevertheless, he terminated the police interview after both sides dug in and the exchange grew more confrontational.

Trial testimony resumes Wednesday.