FORT CARSON, Colo. (AP) - A military jury convicted a Fort Carson soldier of premeditated murder and assault Wednesday in the slaying of his soldier-girlfriend on Valentine's Day 2013.
Sgt. Montrell Lamar Anderson Mayo was accused of slamming a drinking glass into the back of Sgt. Kimberly Walker's head three times and then suffocating her with a pillow when he realized she was still alive.
Walker, 28, was found on a bed sprinkled with rose petals at a motel in Colorado Springs near Fort Carson.
Mayo faces up to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His sentencing hearing was scheduled to start Thursday.
Walker, of Cincinnati, was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. She was visiting Mayo, who was stationed at Fort Carson and is from Greenville, South Carolina.
Prosecutors said Walker was trying to break up with Mayo.
Mayo's military defense lawyer, Capt. Michael Gold, acknowledged Mayo had struck Walker but said he was in a "crazy state of madness" and didn't intend to kill her.
When she collapsed to the floor, Mayo thought she was dead and placed her on the bed amid the flower petals to make a kind of altar, Gold said.
Gold said prosecutors did not prove Mayo tried to smother Walker and suggested the angle of her head had cut off her air supply as she lay unconscious.
He asked the jury to convict Mayo of a lesser count, either voluntary or involuntary manslaughter.
Prosecutors dismissed Foley's account as unlikely.
Walker, a corporal at the time of her death, was given a posthumous promotion to sergeant.
Separately, Fort Carson officials postponed a hearing Wednesday to determine whether another soldier should be court-martialed in the shooting death of a 19-year-old comrade. The lead defense attorney said he had not had time to review all the evidence.
Published: Fri, Nov 21, 2014
