As the death penalty approaches, trial begins in the murder of Tampa 14-year-old

Tampa – One morning in 2022, the car traveled down quiet, dark Tampa Street, doubled and stopped on the side of the road. A time stamp on the surveillance video of a nearby house showed that the headlights sat in the dark for about 50 seconds before the lights turned on and then cut off at 3am almost exactly, then turned off again, then back to it so that it came and then turned off again.

In that short range, Nilkia Alexander was killed in the car.

Three years after a 14-year-old girl was shot dead and left on a dead-end field on Tampa Heights Street, the ju judges eagerly watched the short video as the trial of Roney Tremel Walker opened Wednesday.

Walker, 47, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Nylexia. If the ju judges find him guilty, the prosecutor asks them to recommend a death sentence.

From the beginning, the ju-describers knew that Nylexia was in trouble. They were told through the week-long selection process of ju judges, and again on Wednesday morning, the teenager was out of control and she was struggling and acting immortal.

They wandered around the Belmont Heights housing complex looking at cell phones and saw images of her taken from police surveillance video about 15 minutes before her death.

Aide John Terry said Walker had come to pick her up.

“You can assume at the time that Nilexia Alexander didn’t know what was waiting for her,” Terry told the ju judge.

In the next few minutes, prosecutors said the car had rolled around Tampa. We stopped at the convenience store where Walker bought a drink at Nylexia.

The car moved south along the North Highlands, then turned left at Floribraska Avenue. I made a U-turn on the dead end and stopped next to the field when the headlights were turned off.

Prosecutors said Nylexia was shot three times in the shoulder and three times in the head. Nylexia’s adoptive mother, Ashley Alexander, cried in the court gallery, as prosecutors explained how her daughter suffered.

The car’s headlights returned and then turned off again.

“That might have ended,” Terry told the ju judge. “But that wasn’t the case, because Alexander left a clue.” Her cell phone was still in the back seat of Walker’s car.

The detective later uses the signal on the phone to reconstruct where she was before she was killed, and where Walker’s car went afterwards. They followed the signal to a gas station in Thornton on Hillsboro Avenue where Walker was seen in the video.

The data trail continued until the day after the car rose to Tampa General Hospital. The tag reader there recorded it as a vehicle registered with Walker. Investigators will identify what they deemed to be Nylexia’s blood mixed with Walker’s DNA, located behind the passenger seat of the car and in the door frame.

But the lawsuit against him rests on video and digital evidence as much as the words of a human being called an accomplice.

Robert Quincy Creed was killed by Nylexia at night with Walker. It was from Creed that the detective gathered stories of what happened in the car. He is expected to tell the same story to the ju judge.

He would say Walker had picked him up at home that early morning – he felt bad, but Walker let him go.

He would say that Walker began screaming at Nilexia and accused her of giving her a sexually transmitted disease.

He would hear the gunshot and say he saw Nylexia holding her breasts. He would say he looked at the walker with a silver or chrome pistol and ordered her out of the car. He’ll say Walker left with her and walked a few feet away before firing the gun again.

But Walker’s defense told the ju judge that he couldn’t believe what Creed said.

Assistant public defender Maria Dunker argued that it was not Walker, but a creed, that killed Nylexia.

Walker said that when the detective first asked him, Walker was supportive. He gave them a long statement. He let them look into his phone and his car. He let them take a sample of his DNA.

When police questioned Creed, he denied first knowing Nylexia. However, in the second interview, he was faced with a phone record showing that he would use a phone belonging to Walker’s girlfriend to exchange text messages, Dunker said. He was told that Walker’s lawyer was trying to blame him. He was told he would be charged with murder if he had not said what happened.

After that, what my beliefs said changed. He repeated, imitating the details the detective told him, Dunker said.

Creed, 48, was charged and pleaded guilty to being a murder accessory. He agreed to testify, but has not yet been sentenced.

“This is not the case where multiple people are involved in the murder of Miss Alexander,” assistant public defense attorney Maria Dunker told the ju judge. “Florida chose to make the person Ronnie Walker. The evidence shows they chose to be wrong.”

Walker sat quietly on Wednesday, wearing a dress shirt and suit jacket, making the ju-described choice for over a week. He stared at the panelist’s boldly wrapped glasses. They stared at their backs.

This is the third time in his life that Walker sat in front of such a ju umpire. Fifteen years ago, another panel discovered he was found guilty of manslaughter.

The case centered around a 2003 home invasion robbery, where a woman, Elaine Lanier Caldwell, was shot in the head. The murder remained unsolved for several years before Walker was charged with murder. His first trial in 2009 ended with the judges. A year later, the second panel was found guilty of less manslaughter.

He was accused of spending the rest of his life in prison, but his conviction was overturned by appeal due to the matters of the trial. The lawyer then signed a contract with Walker to plead guilty in exchange for a new punishment of eight years.

He came out in 2016, but a probation violation caused him to return to prison for another four years. He had been out of prison for about seven months when Nilexia was killed.

This new ju umpire will not hear about any of the Walker unless he determines that he is guilty of first-degree murder. If that happens, the prosecutor details his prior conviction, claiming that it is a worsening factor justifying the death sentence.

They will also argue that Nilexia’s death was particularly vicious, violent and cruel, cold, calculated and committed in a planned manner.

Some ju umpires admitted that hearing details about the violent death of a young girl would be upset. However, the selected people vowed that they could put their personal feelings and feelings aside to evaluate cases that concern only facts and laws.

Testimony continues Thursday. The trial could last until July.