Two plead guilty in 2023 BG homicide

Two people who were charged in connection with a Bowling Green man's disappearance and subsequent death entered guilty pleas earlier this week, just before a jury was set to begin hearing evidence in their case. Daivon Thompson, 27, entered an Alford plea Tuesday in Warren Circuit Court to charges of first-degree manslaughter and tampering with physical evidence, while Mayonna Anthony, 22, entered an Alford plea to facilitation of first-degree manslaughter and two counts of tampering with physical evidence by complicity. Both defendants were charged in connection with the disappearance of Malik Lassiter, who was 24 when he was last seen alive on May 11, 2023, near his Russellville Road apartment. In an Alford plea, a defendant denies criminal wrongdoing but acknowledges there is enough evidence against them for a jury to return a guilty verdict, so the plea has the effect of a criminal conviction. A jury trial was set to begin on Tuesday morning, and a jury had in fact been selected for the case, but was not sworn in due to the guilty pleas resulting from ongoing negotiations that afternoon. During the change of plea hearings, Warren County Commonwealth's Attorney Kori Beck Bumgarner said that she was prepared to prove through phone records and other evidence that Thompson had traveled to Bowling Green on the night of May 10, 2023, and remained there into the early hours of the next morning. Based on evidence developed by multiple law enforcement agencies, Lassiter was fatally shot in Bowling Green and his body was not found for another 13 months. Lassiter's vehicle, a Kia, is seen on surveillance video footage from a Bowling Green gas station at 5:53 a.m., May 11, 2023, while a cell phone belonging to Thompson pings off cell towers. Bumgarner said that Lassiter's phone showed no activity after pinging off a tower in the area of Interstate 65 near the Corvette Museum, while Thompson traveled to Louisville, making a call from his phone to Anthony's phone around 6:23 a.m. After stopping in Louisville, Thompson then drove to Georgetown, where Anthony lived at the time, and Lassiter's vehicle was seen later that day in Lexington at several locations with traffic cameras and license plate reader cameras, Bumgarner said. Cell phones belonging to Thompson and Anthony ping off a tower in Elsmere and are co-located together for about 12 hours before coming to a resting point in Columbus, Ohio, where police would find Lassiter's vehicle. Police noted a smell of bleach from inside the vehicle and the presence of blood, and also recovered a hair and a fingerprint from the vehicle that was eventually identified months later as belonging to Thompson. Through a database search, police learned that Thompson and Anthony were involved in a 2022 vehicle crash in Scott County, where law enforcement paperwork identified them as being in a relationship with one another. At the time of his death, Lassiter was in a relationship with Anthony and had driven her home to Georgetown the night before he was last seen alive, according to prior testimony from Detective Kyle Scharlow of the Bowling Green Police Department. BGPD detectives spoke with an ex-girlfriend of Lassiter's, who said that she spoke with him over Facetime late on the night of May 10, 2023, into the early morning hours of the next day and reported that Lassiter expressed worries to her about his relationship with Anthony. Scharlow said in an earlier court hearing that the ex-girlfriend reported hearing a man approach Lassiter and exchange words with him during the Facetime call before losing contact with Lassiter. Bumgarner said that Thompson and Lassiter had no link with one another aside from a relationship with Anthony. "Therefore the commonwealth's proof would have been in this case that in order for Mr. Thompson to have committed the crime, Ms. Anthony would have facilitated it by giving Mr. Thompson the information as to where the victim lived, what he looked like, what he drove and his schedule," Bumgarner said in court Tuesday. Thompson accepted a plea agreement recommending that he serve a 25-year prison sentence, while Anthony faces a 15-year prison sentence. Warren Circuit Judge Chris Cohron set a tentative sentencing date for July 13.