Defendant Kiara Williams during her murder trial: ‘Why am I here?’

Kiara Williams told a jury Monday morning that she thought she was going with a friend to smoke marijuana and then pick up her child.

Instead, Williams testified, she ended up in a car on the way to kill a man.

Williams, testifying in her own defense under a charge of murder, swore she didn’t know that the other people in the car were headed to the apartment of Otis Bolden Jr. the morning he was shot to death nearly two years ago.

“I’ve been trying to figure out, ‘What happened?’ ” Williams, 21, told jurors through tears Monday in Sedgwick County District Court. “How did I come to this point in my life? Why am I here?”

Wichita police looked for days without a solid lead in Bolden’s shooting, which happened just before noon on April 26, 2010. But detectives caught up with Reader Watley, a friend of Bolden’s who had been serving probation in Texas. Watley told detectives he had violated his parole by coming back to Wichita that previous weekend, and he admitted being at Bolden’s apartment in southeast Wichita the night before the shooting.

Watley gave police the name of the woman he had given a ride home that next morning: Kiara Williams.

When Bolden was shot, prosecutors say Williams and her best friend, Jalessa Bonner, sat in a car outside the Fox Run Apartments in the 100 block of South Webb Road. Kevin Brown, Bonner’s boyfriend, and his cousin, Quartez Brown, went inside the apartment and shot Bolden. Bolden managed to jump out a window and hobble a few yards before collapsing and dying of his injuries.

“Were you scared of Kevin Brown?” defense attorney John Sullivan asked Williams.

Williams said Brown had once kicked her in the face.

“I had never been around anyone being shot," Williams said. “I had never been in a predicament like this."

Williams said she had heard the others talking about how they should rob Bolden of drugs. But Williams claimed she told them she didn’t want to be part of a robbery. Williams said she didn’t believe what Bonner claimed about Bolden being a part of a gang rape of her two years earlier.

Bonner, 21, has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the case. Kevin Brown, 24, and Quartez Brown, 21, are serving life prison sentences after juries convicted them of first-degree murder.

Williams, on trial for first-degree felony murder as an accomplice, said she didn’t know where they were going that morning until they arrived at Bolden’s apartment.

But prosecutor Trinity Muth pointed out that Williams had lied at least once during her testimony. On Friday, Williams said this was the first time she had been in the county jail.

Muth produced arrest records showing that Williams first had been in the Juvenile Detention Center in sixth grade. She had been in the Sedgwick County Jail three times in 2009 for minor traffic violations.

Williams said it was the first time she had been in jail for a serious offense.

Muth also asked why Williams never told police about Rika Evans, who lived with Bonner and Kevin Brown. Evans did not go in the car with the others to the apartment and gave some of the most damaging testimony during the trial by saying Bonner and Williams were “giggly” when they learned Bolden had died.

Williams said Kevin Brown told her not to implicate Evans.

“But you told police that Kevin and Quartez had gone in there and shot him?” Muth said. Why not tell them about Evans?

“Is it because you knew she could say the four of you went over to do this crime together?" Muth asked.

“No,” Williams said.

Muth showed Williams a transcript from a recorded interview with Detective Rob Chisholm.

“And you know you were going to Boo’s, right?” Chisholm asked Williams, referring to Bolden’s nickname.

“Yeah,” Williams responded in the transcript.

Williams also told Chisholm and Detective Matt Hall that when they drove up to the apartment she had pointed out that a Jeep that Watley had used to drive her earlier that morning wasn’t in the parking lot.

“If you were really trying to make sure the coast was clear, wouldn’t you want to tell them about the Jeep?” Muth asked.

“I didn’t tell them about the Jeep,” Williams said.

“But you told detectives that,” Muth said.

“Yes, I did,” Williams said.

Jurors are expected to get the case today.

This story was originally published January 23, 2012 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Defendant Kiara Williams during her murder trial: ‘Why am I here?’."