Prosecutor: No charges in teen's fatal shooting

MUNCIE, Ind. – A Muncie woman who fatally shot a teenager in August will not face criminal charges, prosecutors said Monday.

Allayzia Jackson, 17, was shot in the chest during a confrontation in a parking lot in the 300 block of West Main Street shortly after noon on Aug. 31.

She was pronounced dead a short time later at IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital.

In a report issued Monday, Chief Deputy Prosecutor Eric Hoffman said the woman who shot Jackson, 43-year-old Marilyn S. Wilson, “did so in self-defense.”

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A few minutes before the shooting, Jackson’s 20-year-old brother, Deshaun William Jackson, had been sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in a June 2016 armed invasion at Wilson’s home.

Wilson – who had a gun placed to her head during the home invasion – had been a prosecution witness at Deshaun Jackson’s trial, and attended the Aug. 31 sentencing hearing.

According to Hoffman, after the hearing concluded, Jackson’s supporters shouted threats at Wilson as she left the Delaware County Justice Center.

“The situation was so intense that armed courthouse security felt the need to escort Wilson and (a male acquaintance) to their vehicle,” Hoffman wrote.

When Wilson and the man entered his car, a vehicle – occupied by Allayzia Jackson, a male juvenile and their mother, Karlis Jackson – pulled next to it in the lot.

The trio left their car, Hoffman wrote, and positioned themselves around the other vehicle to prevent its driver from pulling away.

Karlis Jackson and the juvenile beat on the car’s windows and demanded Wilson exit the vehicle, the report said.

(According to Hoffman, the elder Jackson later confirmed “she told Wilson to get out of the vehicle so they could fight.”)

Allayza Jackson reached through an open window “and punched Wilson in the face,” the chief deputy prosecutor wrote, and was preparing “to swing a second time” when Wilson removed her .38-caliber handgun from her purse and fired a single shot.

Wilson then went to the Muncie Police Department and surrendered, giving officers her handgun.

An autopsy later confirmed the teenager had died as a result of “a single gunshot wound to the chest.”

“The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that Wilson acted in self-defense and that she reasonably believed that deadly force was necessary to protect herself from an imminent attack,” Hoffman concluded.

The chief deputy prosecutor said Wilson had “the legal authority to to use reasonable force, including deadly force, to terminate the unlawful entry of or attack upon the motor vehicle that she occupied.”

Deshaun Jackson’s co-defendant in the home invasion case, Brian A. Goodson Jr., now 23, was found not guilty of related charges by a Delaware Circuit Court 2 jury on Oct. 25.

Douglas Walker is a news reporter at The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@muncie.gannett.com.