Days after his good friend Arik Sims told him he killed Lamar Fonville, Geoffrey Adams still didn’t know what to do. As a military police officer, he knew he was obligated to tell authorities, but Sims was like a brother to him, Adams said Thursday.
“I was between a rock and a hard place,” said Adams on the stand.
Sims is charged with first-degree murder and three related weapon charges in connection to the Sept. 2012 shooting death of 29-year-old Fonville.
On the stand, Adams testified that two days after Fonville’s death, Sims called him sounding concerned because Sims said he had been picked up by MPD and “needed help on the situation.”
The two men agreed to meet back at Sims’ mother’s house where they both had played since they were 7 or 8 eight years old. When Adams arrived, he said that Sims was waiting in the kitchen with his friend Devin Myers and an attorney.
Adams said Thursday he remembered the attorney advising Sims not to talk to police and saying they, “did not have anything to go on.”
According to Adams, when the attorney left, all three men went out to the backyard to discuss the situation. That is when Sims first asked him to be his alibi, Adams said.
“He needed me to say that we were all at the house during a time frame, and then that he left and went to IHOP,” said Adams during his testimony.
Kalilah Speaks, 23, testified Tuesday that she picked up Sims, Myers, and another man at approximately 3:00 a.m. on the night of the murder, and they all rode in her car to an IHOP.
Speaks said Sims asked her to tell police that he had been with her “having sex,” that night. She testified that Sims told her that he had witnessed something that “they were trying to pin on him,” but did not go into detail.
Adams said that in the backyard, Sims confessed to taking out the battery from his phone before walking up to Fonville, shaking his hand, saying to him, “Really? My mom’s house, really?” and pulling the trigger.
“Arik told me that he did it,” Adams said.
He added that Sims believed Fonville had burglarized his mother’s home on Dec. 16, 2011, and that was the reason why he shot Fonville.
The only thing Adams remembers saying to Sims after his confession was, “What the f**k are you thinking?”
Adams told Sims he could not be his alibi because he was working as a security guard in Northeast D.C. that night, and the company would have his records.
Adams said Thursday he also remembered Myers cracking jokes at Sims because Sims ran back to retrieve a dropped magazine as he fled the scene.
Crime scene investigators in the case testified that they found two bullets near Fonville’s body that had not been fired. Prosecutors argue these two bullets fell out of the magazine when Sims dropped the gun as he ran towards the getaway car where Myers was waiting.
Adams also testified that Sims later burned the clothes he was wearing that night and disposed of the gun.
During cross examination, defense attorney James Rudasill focused on the relationship between Adam and Sims’ mother. Rudasill argues that Adams’ testimony is fueled by jealousy for Sims’ mother and asked Adams why he never spoke to her about the trial.
Adams said acknowledged that Sims’ mother took care of him like a son and said he never spoke to her about the trial because “it was not a conversation she could handle.”
“It sucks that we are here today,” said Adams after leaving the stand, “I still care about [Sims] and wish him the best of luck.”
