Jurors deliberated for five hours Thursday before finding Mario Jamal Viltz, 36, guilty of manslaughter. Viltz had been facing a charge of second-degree murder in the October 2014 beating death of A’Tasha LeShawn Hardy, 25.
Earlier in the day, Viltz took the stand as one of three witnesses called by the defense. He spoke of his relationship with Hardy, characterizing it as smooth in the beginning.
Viltz said they partied together, drinking and doing cocaine, which he admitted selling. He said the relationship began to deteriorate after the father of Hardy’s three children, Titus Trimm, was released from jail.
“After a while, we both started drifting apart,” said Viltz, who was also seeing other women. But he said he remained in contact with Hardy and often did favors for her, including helping her with her children.
Prosecution witnesses had said they’d seen Hardy many times with a black eye, and some blamed Viltz. He admitted bruising Hardy’s eye once, but said it was an accident. He said it only happened that one time.
Viltz said he saw Hardy for the last time at her Anita Drive home on the night of Oct. 29, 2014. He said he had told Hardy that he planned to marry his girlfriend, with whom he was living. “She kind of took it hard,” Viltz said. “We started fussing back and forth.”
Later that night, he said, Hardy asked him why he was leaving her. He said she blocked the doorway and that he moved her out of the way. Viltz said she followed him outside, where he got in his car and left.
He said he arrived home by 11:30 p.m. and “dozed off” at about 12:30 a.m. He said he didn’t wake up until sometime between 5:45 and 6 a.m. Prosecutors presented phone records showing several calls and texts were made or received during the time he was supposed to be sleeping, including some to his girlfriend, who was at home at the time.
Previous witness testimony had placed Viltz at Hardy’s home between 11 p.m. and midnight. Hardy’s next-door neighbor, Amie Dillon, recalled hearing her scream for help sometime after midnight.
Police found the seriously injured woman in her home at 2:41 a.m. Oct. 30. She died the next day in a local hospital from multiple blunt-force injuries to her head and abdomen.
In her closing argument, prosecutor Cynthia Killingsworth told jurors that in the hospital, Hardy named Viltz as her assailant. She said Viltz beat Hardy and left her to die. “He had motive,” she said. “He had opportunity.”
Viltz’s attorney, John Coffman, questioned the handling of the investigation, which he said was too narrowly focused on his client. “Everybody was so focused on Mario that they didn’t look at anyone else,” he said.
Coffman called Trimm a “wild man” with a history of abusing Hardy and questioned his alibi, saying it wasn’t followed up on. “Everybody lies,” he said. “Follow up on everything.”
After hearing the guilty verdict, the victim’s mother, Sonya Hardy, pointed in Viltz’s direction. “He will be here,” she said. “But my grandbabies will never get to see their mama again.”
Judge Clayton Davis will sentence Viltz on Sept. 28.
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