A Chicago man was convicted of murder Wednesday in the 2008 fatal shooting on a CTA bus of a 17-year-old girl who was caught in the middle of a minor squabble that turned violent.
A jury deliberated for 5 1/2 hours before finding Milton Wardlaw, 27, guilty of first-degree murder and aggravated discharge of a firearm in the shooting of Kiyanna Salter, a Julian High School senior.Salter and her friend, Jasmine Wilcox, were on board a 71st-South Shore bus when Wardlaw exchanged words with another passenger near the rear exit door.
The two-day trial centered on surveillance video from the bus that showed Wardlaw exit the bus near Cottage Grove Avenue, turn back and fire at least one shot at the rear door. Salter was struck in the head and died at the scene.
Wardlaw admitted in testimony Wednesday that he was carrying a gun that night -- for protection because he had been “jumped” days earlier in his neighborhood. Wardlaw said the other man on the bus had bumped him and they exchanged words. The other man lifted up his shirt and showed a silver gun stuck in the waistband.
“He said, ‘Man, I’ll shoot you in the (expletive) face,’” Wardlaw said. “He looked at me real ugly, real mean, like he was trying to put fear in my heart.”
Wardlaw said he fired a shot at the back door because he was scared. “When I got off the bus, it was like fear took over,” he testified. “I just reacted.”
Assistant Public Defender Ruth McBeth said in her closing argument Wednesday that Wardlaw was admittedly “a bit rough around the edges” but acted in self defense that night.
“When it’s a person showing you a gun when you just had an argument about who bumped whom, that is threatening,” McBeth said. “That is physical intimidation.”
But Assistant State’s Attorney David Weiner argued Wardlaw was solely to blame for the violence. “This is the person who started the conflict, this is the person who took it a notch higher, and this is the person who decided he was going to end the conflict,” Weiner said of Wardlaw
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