URBANA — After two days of eyewitness testimony, video footage and forensic evidence, a jury acquitted an Urbana man of a first-degree murder charge in the Dec. 8, 2023, shooting.

Turhan L. Sims, 35, was accused of shooting his friend, Kadeem Moore, 34, during an argument between Moore and Moore’s girlfriend.

As described at Tuesday’s hearing, Sims had been living with the couple and his girlfriend’s children for some time.

The state continued to lay out its case Wednesday, entering Facebook messages between Sims and his girlfriend as evidence suggesting the two had some sort of romantic relationship.

When Moore’s girlfriend, a Champaign woman, testified Tuesday, she said she and Sims had not slept together, but messages from her phone showed the couple calling each other “babe” or “bae” and her telling Sims she wanted him. in bed with him.

The day before the shooting, Sims asked the woman if she and Moore had gotten back together, and she told him, “We don’t have a tag.”

On Tuesday, U.S. Special Assistant Marshal David Griffet testified about Sims’ arrest at the Golden Hour store in Champaign on Dec. 18.

Security footage showed Sims hiding a firearm on a shelf among bags of chips, after which Griffet said he ran into the warehouse to hide.

When Griffet entered the store, Sims walked out of the warehouse smoking a cigarette and surrendered.

Forensic investigators would later determine that the firearm was the one used to kill Moore and that it contained traces of DNA from multiple unidentified individuals in addition to Sims.

He was also seen holding the same gun in multiple videos obtained from Sims’ phone.

Public Defender Elisabeth Pollock brought as a witness a friend of Sims’ who had been with him earlier that day; He testified that while the Champaign woman was in her car, she pulled a gun from her purse and gave it to Sims.

But because he was angry about having a loaded gun in his car, he couldn’t remember many details about the gun’s appearance.

“Dude, all the guns are loaded,” Larson said when asked how he knew it was loaded.

Griffet brought Sims to the Urbana Police Department, at which point detectives Darrin McCartney and Kenneth Sprague interviewed Sims for approximately four hours.

Larson played a series of videos in court during Wednesday’s hearing in which Sims repeatedly states different versions of “I’m not a murderer” and “I’ve never killed anyone.”

He claimed he heard gunshots from outside the apartment building but did not witness the shooting on December 8.

At one point he said Moore’s girlfriend would confirm his version of the story, and at another point he said: “If he kills her and says I did it, I’m going to jail.”

McCartney told Sims that there was video footage showing he was there “when the incident occurred,” but Sims’ latest security camera footage shows him leaving the apartment about 13 minutes before the shooting.

Larson showed numerous surveillance images from Tuesday and Wednesday; He said these showed that the camera did not always activate immediately when someone entered its field of view, and he was confident in the technology’s ability to recognize the human form.

However, Pollock pointed out that Sims had no video of anyone on stage during the shooting, and Sims told McCartney that it was impossible for this footage to exist.

Sims, who was present throughout the hearing, chose not to testify.

Larson’s closing argument focused on Sims’ relationship with Moore’s girlfriend and said he wanted Moore out of the picture.

“Kadeem was the problem and the solution was in his waist,” Larson said. “(Moore’s girlfriend and daughter) are the victims of this case, the ones who were subjected to the violence that Turhan and Kadeem brought into their home.”

He also played clips from body camera footage and a 911 call from Moore’s girlfriend.

“This is not the voice of someone trying to slander poor Mr. Sims,” ​​Larson said.

Pollock’s closing argument centered around the idea that if Sims admitted to the shooting, he would have an easy case for second- or third-degree murder rather than first-degree murder.

“If he did that, all Turk (Sims’ nickname) had to do was say, yeah, I did it, and that was defend (Moore’s girlfriend),” Pollock said.

He also questioned his girlfriend’s decision to continue talking and spending time with Sims after the shooting and before his arrest, as well as the six- or seven-minute gap between the shooting and the 911 call.

Pollock suggested that several witnesses might be at fault for the shooting, leading Moore’s girlfriend and daughter to conspire to say Sims did it.

“Unfortunately, I think the two most likely scenarios were that the person who was afraid that Brittany was going to eventually take her from this man was still inside the apartment,” Pollock said.

Pollock also emphasized to the jury that if there was any reasonable doubt about the defendant’s guilt, the jury should return a verdict of “not guilty.”