JACKSON — A Hinds County jury yesterday convicted Darnell Turner of Clinton, who also goes by Donald Dixon, in three separate counts related to a 2014 domestic incident—aggravated assault with a firearm, aggravated domestic violence and shooting into an occupied vehicle. The 39-year-old now faces sentencing in Judge Jeff Weill’s courtroom. The time he must serve could be upward of four decades: In Mississippi, “aggravated assault” is the equivalent of attempted murder.
State prosecutors said in court that Turner, whose nickname is “Slick,” was arrested in 2016 after the State got him indicted for beating the 22-year-old mother of one of his eight children and shooting into the car she was in. He dragged her out of her car, took her to a bridge in the Washington Addition vicinity, tried to strangle her there and suspended her over the railing of a bridge, they say. Then he left, and someone came to her aid. Turner came back and beat that person, picked the victim up, put her in his car and kept beating her there as he drove her home, the State said.
“This heinous act of strangling a woman while dangling her over a bridge deserves maximum punishment,” Attorney General Jim Hood said in a statement on Sept. 11. “Domestic violence is a serious offense. I’m glad to see that a Hinds County jury recognized that fact and stood for protecting other victims of domestic violence. This should send a strong message to other offenders.”…