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A judge declared a mistrial Tuesday in the case of a self-proclaimed “top Blood” charged with killing a Durham club promoter whose body was never found.
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Darrius Tyson, 34, was charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping in the March 2022 disappearance of 44-year-old Shawn Burton.
Superior Court Judge Lamont Wiggins declared a mistrial just before 7 p.m. Tuesday after a jury spent nearly five hours deliberating on Tyson’s fate. The jury sent a note to Wiggins about 6:30 p.m. stating, “We are unable to come to a unanimous decision on any of the three counts. We do not believe any further deliberation will alter the current positions.”
Burton was last seen March 22, 2022, by his fiancée as he got into a vehicle at gunpoint at her apartment complex, The News & Observer reported.
He hasn’t been seen since, and family members testified they haven’t heard from Burton again.
Burton’s fiancée, Ebony McGill, testified she heard Burton shout and thought it was strange, but wasn’t sure what to make of it. Burton’s cousin, Rayshawn Henderson, called McGill minutes later to report that the Ring camera at his North Duke Street duplex, where he was letting Burton stay, kept going off.
The Ring footage, which Henderson shared with police and was shown in court, showed two men holding Burton at gunpoint as he unlocked the door to the house. A third man followed behind, apparently removing the Ring camera from the door before entering. All three men were wearing masks.
McGill and Henderson didn’t call 911 for about an hour and a half as they tried to conduct their own investigation; McGill testified she didn’t want Burton to get in trouble for being away from his Virginia home while on federal probation. In the meantime, Henderson went by the house and discovered it had been ransacked, with blood spattered in the kitchen.
Cameras throughout the city and license plate readers captured Burton’s truck, a white sedan and a dark sedan traveling together from the area of the Front Street apartments to the North Duke Street home, then getting onto Interstate 85. The three vehicles were seen just before 1 a.m. turning into an auto shop in Henderson, investigators testified. Tyson’s phone records would show his phone following that same path.
Over the three-week trial, Durham County Assistant District Attorney Mary Jude Darrow argued the circumstantial evidence all pointed to Tyson and three other men kidnapping Burton, forcing him into the North Duke Street home, and taking him to Henderson, where he was presumably killed.
“As you have figured out in these three weeks, this was not your normal case,” Darrow said in closing arguments Tuesday. “We don’t have an eyewitness to a murder. We don’t have a gun. We don’t have a knife. We don’t have any weapon.”
Burton had previously served time in federal prison for dealing drugs and may have been in the lifestyle again, Darrow said. She proposed that Tyson and his co-defendants believed Burton had drugs and hundreds of thousands of dollars in the home.
“Was Shawn Burton an angel?” Darrow said. “I can’t say that. But he was also a father, and he was a human being. He was a brother. He was a cousin.”
Burton’s truck was found abandoned on railroad tracks in Warren County with what appeared to be blood inside, officers testified. A white Kia Optima that Tyson had rented was also found abandoned in Durham the day after the incident. The rental company’s GPS tracker indicated the Kia had been in Durham and Henderson in the days leading up to and the day of Burton’s disappearance.
Darrow also showed jurors a promotional flyer for Tyson’s burgeoning rap career, which Burton was helping him promote. The flyer featured a photo of Tyson in a jacket that Darrow said matched Ring camera footage from the North Duke Street home.
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“It’s a puzzle that has to be put together,” Darrow told the jury, writing out all of the state’s evidence on a whiteboard. “And I submit to you that the state has done that.”
But Tyson’s defense attorneys, Daniel Meier and Sydney Calas, countered there were many unanswered questions surrounding Burton’s disappearance and no solid proof tying Tyson to the incident. They posited Burton had plenty of reasons to disappear as someone allegedly dealing drugs while on federal probation.
In closing arguments Tuesday morning, Meier questioned why Burton’s fiancée waited nearly two hours to call 911 to report his disappearance. He also raised questions about the investigation into Burton’s disappearance, noting several possible areas like the Wake County landfill and Ellerbee Creek weren’t searched and that Burton’s family had returned to his home state of New Jersey after the incident.
“They were searching for a body,” Meier said. “One thing they never searched for is someone who just didn’t want to be found.”
Forensic evidence, usually a crucial part of the prosecution’s argument, also didn’t provide much clarity in Burton’s disappearance.
State crime lab analyst Andrew Walker testified he was not able to form a complete DNA profile for Burton from the personal items he’d left behind, making it impossible to say with certainty his DNA was at the crime scenes. However, blood found at the crime scenes appeared to be a strong possible match for Burton’s DNA.
“He was not willing to say that that’s Mr. Burton’s DNA,” Meier said.
Tyson’s DNA was not found on any of the items he tested, Walker said.
Though investigators discovered several presumptive blood spatters and stains in the Duke Street home and Burton’s truck, the amount of blood left behind didn’t indicate someone had been killed — only that someone had been injured, Darrow acknowledged.
“You heard the DA talk about, ‘Well, they were in this location and when they didn’t find what they were looking for, they took him up to Henderson to make him talk’ — there is no evidence of that,” Meier said. “That is pure speculation.”
Murder convictions in cases without a body are rare in North Carolina; The N&O found only one such case in the state in the past two decades.
“We don’t know the full story,” Meier said. “It’s because other people are not giving you the full story.”
The case had gained notoriety before the trial after Darrow said in court that Tyson told investigators he was the “king Blood” gang member in all of North Carolina. The jury was not allowed to hear evidence relating to Tyson’s possible gang involvement.
Tyson also received media attention after two Durham County jail employees were charged with sexually assaulting him. One of the women, former Sgt. Nicole Locke, pleaded guilty to taking bribes from Tyson to provide food and other contraband. The charges against the other defendant, Jade Robertson, remained pending as of Tuesday evening.
Tyson remained jailed with bail set at $1.25 million secured as of Tuesday evening; Meier motioned to set a date for a bond hearing for his client, but Wiggins said he needed to sort out other logistics in the case before doing so. Darrow didn’t indicate whether the state intends to try Tyson again on the charges.
Tyson’s three codefendants have yet to stand trial. They remained jailed without bail as of Tuesday evening.
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