By Bobby Mathews, Sports Editor
BIRMINGHAM — Troy Ellis, the 11-year-old boy killed during a turkey hunting excursion in May 2020, was hit with at least 30 pellets from a shotgun blast to his face and neck, the associate medical examiner for Jefferson County told jurors on Wednesday afternoon.
Dr. Daniel Dye, who did the autopsy on Ellis, detailed at least 13 wounds as the district attorneys showed jurors the photographs taken during the postmortem examination.
Joshua Stewart Burks, 37, is on trial for reckless manslaughter in the death of the child. Jefferson County deputy district attorneys Deborah Danneman and Misty Reynolds rested the state’s case after Dye’s testimony. At one point a grand jury had upped the charge to murder, but the district attorney’s office has chosen to prosecute the reckless manslaughter charge.
Dye said the injuries are compatible with a shotgun.
Asked if the victim could have survived the shooting, Dye answered succinctly: “No.”
Ellis and his father, Obed, were on a hunting trip with Burks on a hunting trip organized for wounded veterans the day the boy was killed. Burks, a former U.S. Marine and a teacher and coach, claims he thought Troy Ellis was a turkey when he shot. It was, according to the defense, the first time Burks had been hunting.
Obed Ellis was wounded in the knee during the incident, and attempted to render first aid and CPR to his son, but the boy’s injuries were too grievous.
The hunting trip was set up on behalf of an organization called America’s Heroes Enjoying Recreation Outdoors. The Ellises and Burks were accompanied by Kyle Henley. Previous reports allege that Henley set up the hunt off of Cedar Mountain Road near Clay.
Tiffany Dial, who worked the crime scene as an evidence technician for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, helped the prosecution introduce physical evidence such as photos from the scene that included blood spatter, spent shotgun shell casings, and the Ithaca Mag 10 shotgun used to fire the fatal shot.
“As I approached the crime scene, I saw … numerous first responders had converged at the end of the trail,” Dial said. She and other investigators used an all-terrain vehicle or walked in order to reach the scene.
The Ellis family has since settled a wrongful death lawsuit against Burks, Henley and the AHEROES organization in October 2021. The suit claimed, among other things, that Burks had taken a significant amount of pain medication the night before the hunt as well as the morning that they were out in the woods, and that he was “likely not capable of safely handling a firearm and certainly was not capable of making appropriate decisions with regard to handling a weapon.”
In a motion heard after the jury had been briefly dismissed, defense attorneys Will Phillips and Robert “Bucky” Thomas argued that the state had not made its case for reckless manslaughter and sought dismissal of the charges. Judge Clyde Jones denied the motion.
The defense for Burks will begin its case on Thursday, April 21, at 9 a.m. in District Courtroom 706.