A former Abbeville police officer admitted to choking a 15-year-old boy, but claimed he tried to help him afterward and that they were just playing around.
Davey Jones testified in his own defense Tuesday afternoon during his misdemeanor reckless endangerment trial he had no intention of hurting anyone during the incident that occurred on Aug. 22, 2009.
Houston County District Court Judge John Steensland declared Jones, 22, guilty after nearly two hours of testimony. Jones faced the possibility of up to a year in jail had he been convicted of the class A misdemeanor crime. Instead, Steensland sentenced Jones to pay a fine of $500 and court costs.
Steensland handled the case in Houston County after a Henry County district court judge recused himself. Henry County Sheriff William Maddox said at the time of the incident that Henry County deputies arrested Jones and handled the investigation. The parents of the victim asked that Henry County step in because Jones is the son of the Headland Police Chief Mark Jones.
Jones told the court after his conviction was announced he’d been out of work for six months. He had been a police officer for about a year at the time of the incident.
Trevor Windham, who was 15 years old at the time of the assault, testified Jones never offered to help after he’d fallen to the ground.
Cody Wilkerson, 16, testified he saw Jones put a beer down and called out “watch this” in the moments before he choked Windham.
“He come up behind him and got him in a chokehold,” Wilkerson said. “He picked him up off the ground. When Trevor was passed out, he didn’t lay him on the ground or anything. He just dropped him.”
Wilkerson said he watched Windham’s eyes roll back into head and urinate on himself as he fell to the ground. Wilkerson said he helped Windham to his feet
a few minutes later, and they left the trailer, which he said was located off Henry County Road 13 near Headland.
“I didn’t know until after he choked him that he was a police officer,” Wilkerson said.
Attorney John White, who represented Jones, questioned Wilkerson whether Windham could’ve passed out because he was intoxicated from too much alcohol. Wilkerson said several of the teenagers at the trailer were drinking beer.
Jones said he’d had four beers from a 12-pack he’d been drinking that night, but he had not given any to the teenagers. He admitted to putting Windham in a chokehold, but only after he’d already been wrestling with some other teenage friends. But Jones said he had not wrestled with Windham.
“I tried to help him up by pulling on his arms,” Jones said. “Before I had been choked and so had some others. I was not trying to impress nobody. I was just playing around.”
White submitted to the court during closing the evidence against his client fell short of reckless endangerment. White called it an issue of “playing around,” and that his client had no intention of hurting anyone.
District Attorney Doug Valeska called the incident an unprovoked attack on a 15-year-old by a man who carried a badge as a police officer.
“You have a 22-year-old man who’s a police officer who’s drinking with juveniles,” Valeska said.
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