Wichita woman who ran over, shot bicyclist last year wants to withdraw murder plea
A Wichita woman who pleaded guilty last month to fatally shooting a bicyclist after she ran him down with a van in 2021 has changed her mind.
In a handwritten motion, Charity Blackmon says she felt “pressured” when she agreed to plead guilty on March 21 to counts of second-degree intentional murder and criminal possession of a weapon by a convicted felon in connection with the March 26, 2021, death of Merrill C. Rabus, 54.
She’s asking the court to let her withdraw the plea and carry on as if it had never happened.
“I feel like I was pressured to take it and I didn’t have enough time to make my decision,” Blackmon wrote in the motion, filed in Sedgwick County District Court on April 4.
She entered the guilty plea ahead of her jury trial last month, Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said in a March news release.
Blackmon, 32, also claims in the motion to have “new evidence” to present to the court but didn’t elaborate on what that might be.
A judge on Monday allowed her defense attorney to withdraw from the case and appointed a new one after the lawyer argued her motion and its contents “create a conflict of interest” between them, court records show.
While defendants are sometimes allowed to withdraw a plea, it is uncommon because judges are typically careful to ensure that a defendant is making the decision of their own free will and understands the consequences before it is finalized in court.
If a judge allows her guilty plea to stand, Blackmon faces up to 51 1/2 years in prison.
She is currently scheduled for sentencing on May 9. She remained in the Sedgwick County Jail on Monday in lieu of $800,000 bond, an online log of inmates shows.
Police have said Blackmon ran over Rabus, a stranger, while he was riding a bicycle in the intersection of 13th and Oliver in north Wichita. She then got out of the van and shot him once in the chest with a handgun around 4:25 p.m. Rabus was pronounced dead at a hospital about half an hour later, authorities have said.
When she was interviewed by authorities, Blackmon claimed she ran down and attacked Rabus because he was “making gestures, smiling and mouthing towards her,” according to a probable cause affidavit released by the court last year. She admitted to police that she didn’t know him, the document says.
Prosecutors originally charged Blackmon with first-degree premeditated murder, a crime that carries a presumptive prison sentence of life without parole for 50 years.
