Man stole weapon used to kill Wichita couple in motel room. He’s been sentenced.
A Wichita man has been ordered to serve 16 months in prison for stealing the murder weapon from the scene of a double homicide in east Wichita last year.
Gregory L. Carter went into Room 4437 of the Blue Way Inn & Suites, 7321 E. Kellogg Drive, after another man fatally shot Christopher L. Harrell Sr. and Natisha Lynn Phillips and walked out with the gun used to kill them, court records say. Motel surveillance footage caught Carter entering the second-floor two-bedroom suite on Feb. 24, 2024 and leaving with an “AR-15 style rifle … concealed within his jacket” around the same time a motel employee took the dying couple’s 3-year-old son from the room, according to a probable cause affidavit released in the case.
The child was not harmed in the fatal shootings.
Police later found the gun — an Anderson AM-15 .223-caliber pistol — under a mattress in a room down the hall. The gun belonged to the slain couple, court records say.
Carter told police he and the employee went into the room to see what had happened and retrieve the child after hearing two gunshots. He told police he took what he believed to be an airsoft rifle from the bed “out of concern for everyone’s safety,” according to the affidavit.
Carter knew Harrell, 35, had been shot before going inside the motel room because the door was ajar enough for him to see him lying on the floor by it. Phillips, also 35, was slumped in an office chair in the room, the affidavit says.
Phillips, who was shot in the head, died in an ambulance in the motel parking lot. Harrell died at a hospital from a gunshot wound to the neck.
The shooting happened around 8:11 a.m. Carter went into the motel room more than an hour later, around 9:24 a.m., according to the affidavit.
Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office spokesman Dan Dillon confirmed that the stolen gun is the same one that was used to kill the couple. Carter, 29, pleaded guilty in January to one count of theft and one count of criminal possession of a weapon by a convicted felon. Sedgwick County District Judge Tyler Roush handed down the 16-month sentence on Friday.
The man accused of committing the homicides, 21-year-old John A. Griffin III, is facing an arraignment on capital murder, aggravated child endangerment and other charges later this month, court records show. An arraignment is a type of court hearing where a defendant may receive a formal reading of the charges and is asked how they want to plea.
