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CHESAPEAKE — When police arrived at the Chesapeake house, one woman already had been rushed to the hospital by her family.
She’d been shot in the stomach.
No more than 45 seconds after he arrived, Officer Kyshaun Merchant heard a gunshot from the back of the house.
Roughly 60 to 90 seconds later, he heard two more shots, the officer testified Wednesday in court.
When a SWAT team entered the house in the early morning hours Jan. 2, officers worked their way to a bathroom off a first-floor bedroom. Inside, they found 37-year-old Iaisha James dead on the floor.
One of her arms and a leg were draped over her boyfriend, Antonio Sutton, who was lying on the ground on his back, according to testimony. A handgun also lie on the bathroom floor, between their heads.
At a preliminary hearing Wednesday, General District Judge Erin Evans-Bedois found prosecutors had established probable cause in their case against Sutton and sent the charges forward to Circuit Court, moving the case a step closer to trial.
Sutton, 39, is charged with second-degree murder in James’ death. He’s also charged with wounding her adult daughter and faces several gun charges.
James’ daughter, Itayzia James, testified in court Wednesday that she was upstairs that morning, braiding her cousin’s hair, when she heard “thuds” coming from her mother’s bedroom on the first floor.
She went to the bedroom door and could hear her mother crying. She knocked but couldn’t open the door, she said.
Itayzia James testified Sutton opened the door several minutes later and yanked her inside. Sutton, who was wearing boxers, shut the door, stood in front of it and reached behind his back, she said.
“No, bae,” James recalled her mother saying to Sutton. “No, please.”
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James said Sutton then shot her in the stomach and grabbed her in a bear-hug, squeezing her. Her mom punched Sutton in the back of the head and smashed a mirror over him until he dropped her, she testified.
James fled the bedroom and told her brothers to call police. Her family rushed her to the hospital.
At the hearing, a police officer and a detective described how the SWAT team deployed a robot with a camera to search the first floor of the house before they went in. Police slipped an under-door camera into the bedroom so they could see inside.
When police entered the bedroom, Officer Patrick Richardson immediately went to the bathroom door, which was closed, he testified. He could see blood under the door and opened it, which is when he spotted Iaisha James.
Richardson said he told Sutton to show his hands, but Sutton wouldn’t do so and kept moving, trying to get up. Sutton bent over toward the gun, Richardson testified, and the officer threw him out of the bathroom.
Sutton appeared for the hearing by video from jail. His next court date will be set in April.
Margaret Matray, 757-222-5216, margaret.matray@pilotonline.com