Man convicted of murder for fatal shooting at motorcycle club
DAVID PATCH The Blade dpatch@theblade.com Toledo, Ohio February 26, 2025,
A Lucas County jury convicted a Toledo man for murder Wednesday afternoon in another man’s shooting death almost a year ago during a melee at a central Toledo after-hours club.
The jury of eight women and four men took just over three hours to find DeAndre Koonce, 30, of the 1800 block of Airport Highway, guilty of alternative counts of murder and felonious assault for the March 3 shooting of Caprise Arnett.
Arnett, 34, collapsed outside the clubhouse of the Envy’Us Ryders Motorcycle Club in the 1400 block of Belmont Avenue following the incident inside.
Although he did not take the witness stand in Lucas County Common Pleas Court himself, Koonce’s defense lawyer contended he shot Arnett in defense of his sister, Vicky Smith, who was in a fistfight with the victim on the unlicensed club’s floor when the shot was fired.
But Ms. Smith’s testimony Wednesday as the trial’s last witness may have undermined her brother’s cause. She told the court that while she told Anrett three times to stop bothering her and then punched him after he spat at her, it seemed to her that once they ended up on the floor under the bar, Arnett was deliberately missing with his punches because she was female.
Koonce faces a likely term of life in prison with parole possible after 18 years when Judge Lori Olender sentences him March 13.
Both Kati Tharp, Koonce’s defense lawyer, and relatives of Arnett’s who watched from the courtroom gallery declined to comment after the verdict was read.
Jennifer Donovan, an assistant Lucas County prosecutor, conceded during closing arguments that Arnett was being “a jerk” when he aggressively hit on Ms. Smith and, before that, Koonce’s girlfriend Antoinette Cobbler, who testified Tuesday afternoon that she told him 10 times he wasn’t interested in him.
“But none of that justified what happened next,” Ms. Donovan said. “Miss Smith had taken care of it” and she and other club members had Arnett down on the floor, overwhelmed, and surrounded, she said.
Although police witnesses said Koonce confessed to the shooting under interrogation and allowed as how it would likely result in his “going away for a long time,” no recording of that interrogation was available because of a mistake at police headquarters.
Ms. Tharp argued in closing that prosecutors had not even proven Koonce fired the single shot, considering that several other club patrons were determined to have had guns, including one plainly seen in surveillance video from inside.
None was matched to the single spent shell casing found at the scene, and detectives testified Koonce told them they would never find the gun he’d used.
Investigators determined Arnett was not armed.
Ms. Tharp also repeated that Koonce himself had been shot on two different occasions — once by 13 bullets — to promote the idea that he would be particularly wary of aggressive people in a place like the motorcycle clubhouse while being protective of his sister.
“He did what any of us would do to protect a loved one,” the defense lawyer said. “Watch it [the videos] for yourselves and see what you see.”
But Ms. Donovan said Koonce’s past victimhood did not give him “license to give personal hardship to somebody else.”
First Published February 26, 2025, 6:08 p.m.
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