FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — New perspective on the day prosecutors say Stewart Coleman shot and killed Carl Johnson was shared in court Monday, by the accused killer’s mother.
“As he’s approaching the shed and he comes in I realize that he is not doing well, that his eyes is blank, there’s nothing there,” said Wanda Coleman.
She explained to the court that her son Stewart is schizophrenic, and has struggled with mental health for 30 years.
On August 2, she says Stewart was having an episode that convinced him his life was in danger, and that danger was Carl Johnson, a man Stewart had never met.
“He said he felt he was there to kill him, he kept saying ‘you’re here to kill me, you’re here to kill me,” Wanda said as she recalled her son’s words.
Wanda initially called Stewart over to introduce him to Johnson, who was his late father’s fishing buddy.
Johnson was there to take fishing equipment from a shed that Wanda offered to him.
But when Wanda realized what was happening, she grabbed Stewart, and desperately tried to calm him down.
“I’m still trying to get him back,” she said, “trying to get him to see that what’s happening is not happening.”
Moments later, Wanda says she noticed a gun in Stewart’s right hand and told Johnson to leave the shed.
As she struggled to keep the gun at Stewart’s side, Wanda fell to the ground and lost sight of the situation
That’s when she heard the sound of gunfire.
“I was looking at Carl and I was thinking nothing had happened to him, but then he sat down on the grass, and then I realized that I seen a hole on his shirt,” she said as she relived the tragic moment.
After calling for an ambulance, Wanda says she found her son sitting on the porch, also calling for help.
Stewart would wait there until authorities arrived.
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