A prosecutor told jurors Friday that the sequence of events was straightforward when a Baldwin Borough woman fatally shot another woman in a South Side barber shop last year.
Myairah Carter, 26, turned herself in less than an hour after entering Bonez Barbershop on East Carson Street shop in the afternoon of Oct. 4, 2025. She fired three shots, killing Rayon Williams, 26, of McKeesport. The two women had been feuding for two years.
Carter faces a single charge: criminal homicide.
“Ms. Myairah Carter walked into Bonez Barbershop … with her phone and her firearm,” Allegheny County Assistant District Attorney Ashley Clements said during opening statements in Common Pleas Judge Elliot Howsie’s Downtown Pittsburgh courtroom.
“What you will see (in surveillance videos) is, without warning, Ms. Carter firing three shots at Rayon Williams,” Clements added. “What you will see is that those three shots hit Rayon in the stomach, the neck and the wrist … and what you will see is the shock and terror on everyone’s face.”
Clements’ opening remarks lasted four minutes.
Defense attorney Ken Haber, who represents Carter, told jurors that context is key to understanding what unfolded at the barber shop that Saturday afternoon.
In 51-minute opening remarks — which drew three objections from prosecutors — Haber painted a picture of an upstanding citizen, legally carrying a gun, who defended herself when confronted with a physical threat.
“If only things were that simple, if only life was that basic,” Haber said, responding to Clements, in the first words of his remarks.
Haber called Carter, the oldest of six children, “something of a role model to her siblings.” The University of Pittsburgh alumnus, who graduated in 2023 with a degree in criminal justice, was the first in her family to go to college.
The feud between Carter and Williams started the year she graduated from Pitt, when Williams — then dating a woman that Carter had previously dated — stole Carter’s pistol out of her car at a McKeesport park, Haber said.
Carter reported the theft to McKeesport police, further angering Williams, he added. Vitriol on social media and “direct or indirect threats” followed, according to Haber.
Haber claimed Carter hadn’t seen Williams in two years before they found themselves sitting next to each other at the barber shop last October. Williams’ haircut was ending, and Carter’s was just beginning.
Williams threatened Carter, Haber told jurors.
“‘I thought she was going to shoot me or attack me,’” Carter told police, according to Haber. “’I saw her reaching in an area I believe she had a gun. I was in fear.’”
Carter fired the pistol she was holding under her barbershop cape three times, police said last year. She then walked to her car and drove home. About 40 minutes later, after calling her mother and her girlfriend, Carter called 911 and turned herself in.
Williams, who was not armed, died at UPMC Mercy hospital.
“No one here takes any comfort or joy in the fact that a life was lost in this case — no one,” Haber said. “But there are laws in Pennsylvania … about self-defense.”
The shooting was reported to police just before 1 p.m. and captured on the barbershop’s surveillance cameras, police said previously in court filings.
Police said the video shows Carter sitting in a barber’s chair at the shop, her arms concealed by a cape. Williams and two of the shop’s staff are standing next to her.
Williams is seen holding a cellphone in her right hand. When she steps toward Carter, Carter opens fire from under the cape.
Williams runs to the back of the shop and collapses. Carter gets up, brandishes her gun and leaves.
Police previously said Carter agreed to speak with them last October.
Carter told police Williams wanted to go outside and fight, and that Williams said “she was going to hit her, causing her hair to get messed up,” according to a criminal complaint.
“Carter said Williams told her that she ‘had to go outside sometime,’” the complaint said.
Carter said that Williams stepped toward her with her left hand holding the bottom of her shirt. Asked if she saw if Williams was armed, Carter told police she did not see Williams with a firearm.
After Williams stepped toward her, Carter told police she did not know if Williams was going to hit her or shoot her, so she fired three shots from under the cape.
Police reported recovering three fired 9mm shell casings at the shop.
Asked last year if she felt she needed to shoot Williams, Carter said, “No, I didn’t have to shoot her,” according to court records.
Carter’s trial will resume on Monday.