Attorneys piece together story of West Palm man who killed his friends
Kenneth Hawthorne appears at his trial in West Palm Beach, Florida on April 25, 2023. Hawthorne is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder in the deaths of two men in 2017.
WEST PALM BEACH — Kenneth Hawthorne complained of a stomach ache before he killed two friends and tried to kill a third.
Prosecutors said the 22-year-old shot a sleeping Isaiah Hyndman first, then turned to the bedroom next door where Cortney Lowery Jr. and Abiade Granger lay sprawled about, their eyes on the TV. Hawthorne opened the door and shot them, too, on an afternoon in 2017.
No one could say why he did it. The lack of motive suggested he didn’t do it, his public defenders argued in court last week. Ballistics evidence and the testimony of Granger — the sole survivor and Hawthorne’s best friend since kindergarten — convinced a jury otherwise.
They convicted the now-28-year-old man of premeditated murder and attempted murder Thursday. Relatives of Granger, Lowery and Hyndman leaned on one another as they filed out of the courtroom after, leaving Hawthorne’s mother frozen in her seat. She sobbed when the doors closed behind them.
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Gunman pulled on noise-canceling headphones before opening fire
The young men were close, Assistant State attorney Francine Edwards said. Hawthorne and Hyndman, 21, were roommates at the Caribbean Villas apartment complex in West Palm Beach. Hawthorne often played video games in his bedroom with Lowery, 21, and Granger, 23.
They played 16 rounds of Call of Duty while Hyndman laid in bed in the room next door on March 29, 2017. Hawthorne swapped the game out for another one, Granger said, then left the room without a word. He closed the bedroom door behind him.
Granger and Lowery continued to play until rapid, unrelenting gunfire sounded from the room next door. Granger said Hawthorne reappeared in the doorway of his bedroom and continued to pull the trigger, a pair of noise-canceling headphones over his ears.
Edwards described the path of the gunfire: one bullet in Hyndman’s head, one in his chest and another in his thigh; five in Lowery’s back; two in Granger’s head, two in his chest, two in his stomach.
Story continues
Hawthorne continued to pull the trigger, Granger said, not yet realizing he’d run out of bullets.
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Attorneys struggled to explain murders without motive
Assistant Public Defender Courtney Wilson kept her voice even throughout the trial, modeling the dispassionate way jurors are supposed to consider evidence.
“What appears obvious is not always the truth,” she said.
Granger had only seconds to look at the gunman in the doorway before he turned away to shield his face from the bullets. His mind grappled for an explanation, Wilson said, and it could have landed on Hawthorne in error.
There was nothing to suggest that Hawthorne schemed or planned to kill them either, she said. Investigators didn’t find texts or posts or handwritten notes hinting at any conflict in their relationship — only a business plan the young men wrote with dreams of making music together.
Even the pace of the gunfire — rapid and without pause, the gunman continuing to pull the trigger after the bullets stopped — points to a state of unconsciousness, she said; no time for reflection, which is required to prove that a killing was premeditated.
Public Defender Carey Haughwout rebutted the testimony of a firearms expert who said the bullets in the victims’ bodies came from Hawthorne’s gun. She called it an “opinion,” tainted by investigators’ belief even before they analyzed the gun that Hawthorne pulled the trigger. His was the only weapon they tested against the bullets.
Gunman’s mental illness delayed trial for years
Hawthorne’s attorneys made no reference during their closing argument to the mental illness that had for years made Hawthorne unfit to stand trial. He was involuntarily hospitalized after his arrest in 2017 and treated for schizophrenia until court-appointed psychologists deemed him competent in 2019.
His mental illness was so severe that it rendered him “incapable of controlling his actions,” an assistant public defender told the judge in 2019, arguing that prosecutors shouldn’t be allowed to seek the death penalty if jurors found him guilty. The State attorney‘s Office maintained its threat of execution until August, then reversed course.
Circuit Judge Scott Suskauer
The six years Hawthorne spent hospitalized and jailed “have been a slow torture for a man who wants to know what lies ahead in his future,” Haughwout wrote in a last-bid attempt to have the case dismissed in April. She argued unsuccessfully that Hawthorne’s constitutional right to a speedy trial had been violated.
Haughwout also asked Circuit Judge Scott Suskauer to divide Hawthorne’s trial into two parts: the first to determine whether he shot Lowery, Hyndman and Granger, and the second to decide whether he was legally insane when he did it. Attorneys for a man accused of stabbing to death a Palm Beach Gardens teen asked Circuit Judge Daliah Weiss for the same thing in January.
Neither judge granted the request. Suskauer will sentence Hawthorne to prison May 10 after hearing testimony from defense experts and the victims’ families. He got a glimpse of their grief and gratitude Thursday.
“I can close my eyes and sleep tonight and know that justice was done,” said Hyndman’s father, Kyle.
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Jury finds West Palm Beach man guilty of murder for killing his friends
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