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

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

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

The state continued to make its case Wednesday, introducing Facebook messages between Sims and the girlfriend into evidence that appeared to suggest the two had some sort of romantic relationship.

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

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

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

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

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

Forensic investigators would later determine that the firearm was the one used to kill Moore and had traces of DNA from Sims, as well as several unidentified individuals.

Sims was also shown holding what appeared to be the same gun in several videos obtained from his phone.

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

However, he did not remember many details about the appearance of the gun as he was upset that there was a loaded gun in his car at all.

When Larson asked how he knew it was loaded, he said, “Man, every gun is 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 clips from that interview in court Wednesday, in which Sims repeatedly stated variations of “I’m not a killer” and “I’ve never killed anybody.”

He claimed to have heard gunshots outside the apartment, but did not witness the Dec. 8 shooting.

At one point he said Moore’s girlfriend would corroborate his version of the story, and at another he said: “If I killed him and he said I did, I’m going to jail.”

McCartney told Sims he had video footage of him there “when it happened,” but the last security camera footage of Sims shows him leaving the apartment about 13 minutes before the shooting.

Larson showed several security camera clips Tuesday and Wednesday that he said showed the camera didn’t always activate correctly when someone showed up and relied on the technology’s ability to recognize a human form.

Pollock, however, pointed out that no one had video of Sims on stage during filming, and Sims told McCartney that it was impossible for such footage to exist.

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

Larson’s closing arguments centered around Sims’ relationship with Moore’s girlfriend, saying he wanted him out of the picture.

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

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

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

Pollock’s closing arguments centered around the idea that if Sims admitted to the shooting, he would have a light case of second- or third-degree murder, rather than first-degree.

“All Turk (a nickname for Sims) has to do, if he did this, is say yes, I did, and it was to defend her (Moore’s girlfriend),” Pollock said.

She questioned the 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 lapse between the shooting and the 911 call.

Pollock suggested any of several witnesses could have been responsible for the shooting, prompting Moore’s girlfriend and her daughter to conspire to say Sims did it.

“Unfortunately, I think the two most likely scenarios are that someone who was still in the apartment was terrified that Brittany was finally going to get from this guy,” Pollock said.

Pollock also emphasized to the jury that any reasonable doubt as to the defendant’s guilt, the jury should find “not guilty.”