Loudon County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Patrick Upton still isn’t sure why mere words led to the deaths of two women allegedly at the hands of a one-time reserve officer.
“It was just talk,” Upton testified Thursday in Loudon County General Sessions Court. “There was some Facebook stuff and text messages. To this day, we don’t know. It was just talk.”
Colby Shane Cannon, 28, who once served as a volunteer reserve officer for the Loudon Police Department and a correctional officer for the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, admitted fatally shooting his girlfriend, Bethany Christian McKenzie, 28, and his sister, Taylor Brooke Cannon Creamer, 24, outside his home on White Wing Road in June.
He called 911 himself.
“I just shot my sister,” he told a dispatcher. “They was kind of fighting and all of that.”
Premeditated?
The question Thursday for Loudon County General Sessions Court Judge Rex A. Dale at a preliminary hearing in the case was whether there was enough probable cause – a low evidentiary standard – to send first-degree murder charges against Cannon to a grand jury for review.
Defense attorney Robert Kurtz argued there was no proof Cannon meant to kill either woman and, in fact, the 911 call was proof he didn’t.
“The only proof in the record as to what happened was Ms. McKenzie was shot and Mr. Cannon’s own words were he did not intend to shoot her,” Kurtz said. “He told 911 what happened. He said he shot them (and) ‘I didn’t mean to.’ There’s no proof of premeditation.”
Assistant District Attorneys General Bob Edwards and Lauren Bennett disagreed.
Edwards noted Cannon’s own stepson, who was 8 at the time, saw Cannon walk into his trailer – leaving the two women outside – opened his gun safe and took out a 9 mm handgun, which he then carried outside and opened fire.
“This defendant retrieves the weapon from the safe and executes these women,” Edwards said.
What about the gun safe?
Upton testified Cannon didn’t tell him about that trip to the gun safe.
“Mr. Cannon advised he had the gun on him,” Upton testified. “(The boy) advised Mr. Cannon came back in the house, went to the safe, got the gun and then came back out. That’s when he heard the shots.”
McKenzie was shot in the back of the neck and in the side. She died at the scene outside the trailer. Detective Sgt. Charlie Cosner testified Creamer was facing Cannon when shot twice in the upper chest area. She died later at the University of Tennessee Medical Center.
Dale sided with the state, sending both counts of first-degree murder to a grand jury for review. But he was troubled by a second set of charges alleging aggravated child abuse and neglect because Cannon’s stepson and two younger children he had with McKenzie – a toddler and a preschooler – were present.
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