A Pottstown man killed his ex’s boyfriend during a custody exchange. Was it self defense or murder?
A Pottstown custody exchange that ended in fatal gunfire is at the center of a murder trial this week in Norristown, and jurors on Tuesday heard conflicting accounts of that brief, deadly episode last summer.
Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Courtney McMonagle said in her opening statement that Kevin Morgan, 35, killed Derek Mayo, the man dating the mother of his 13-year-old daughter, Peyton. Morgan, she said, goaded Mayo, 38, into a confrontation before shooting him in the chest as Peyton, along with Mayo’s 2-year-old son, watched in horror from a car nearby.
“He took a loaded gun to a custody exchange with his daughter,” McMonagle said. “And he made the conscious decision to pull that trigger.”
But Morgan’s attorney, John Han, told jurors that prosecutors were “cherry-picking” facts and obscuring important context about Mayo’s history of threats and abuse toward his client. Morgan, the lawyer said, was backing away from Mayo, who was reaching toward his waistband as he “charged” toward him.
“The evidence shows that the events that day did not happen in a vacuum,” Han said. “There’s a larger story that needs to be told.”
The confrontation between the two men took place June 27, 2023 a few, yards away from Morgan’s home on May Street in Pottstown, according to investigators. Kelsay Love-Shellar, Morgan’s ex-girlfriend, had come to the home to pick up their daughter as part of their custody agreement.
Mayo had come along for the ride, something that Han said surprised Morgan. McMonagle, the prosecutor, disputed this, saying Morgan had prepared to meet with Mayo, changing into a heavy jacket and long, baggy pants, despite the summer heat, so that he could better hide the gun he was carrying.
When Morgan opened the car door for his daughter, he saw Mayo and became angry, calling him a derogatory name and demanding to know why Love-Shellar had brought him to his home, according to trial testimony.
As Love-Shellar, Mayo and Morgan argued, Morgan held the car door open, according to the girl’s testimony Tuesday. Eventually, Love-Shellar pulled away, but stopped the car nearby at Mayo’s insistence, the girl said.
Mayo then got out of the car, yelled to Morgan “Is this what you want?,” and approached him, Peyton said. When the men were a few feet apart, Morgan fired his gun once, hitting Mayo in the chest.
Peyton witnessed the aftermath of the shooting, watching as Mayo yelled that he had been shot and clutched his chest. She pulled the 2-year-old away from the window, she said Tuesday through her tears, so he wouldn’t see his father’s injury.
Police arrived not long afterward. Mayo was taken to Pottstown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Morgan was taken into custody by officers, who found the gun they say he used to shoot Mayo inside a second-floor bedroom of his home. He had a permit to carry a concealed weapon at the time of the shooting.
Han said Mayo had made a series of threats against Morgan since Mayo began dating Love-Shellar in 2016.
Two months before the fatal shooting, Mayo threatened Morgan during an argument, saying he was tired of him and promised to fight him the next time they saw each other, according to Han.
In 2019, Mayo texted Morgan, saying he should never have been born and calling him a “rat” for testifying against two people who had killed Morgan’s best friend outside a bar in West Chester in 2012, the lawyer said.
Morgan’s testimony had helped Chester County prosecutors secure convictions for both, Han said. Mayo, he said, has ties to one of the killers, James J.E. Potts Jr. Mayo and one of Potts’ friends attacked Morgan during an earlier custody exchange in 2019, according to Han.
The trial is expected to last through Friday before Montgomery County Court Judge William Carpenter.