Jaismon Morris, mother of Amya Monserrat, gets emotional during her testimony Monday in the murder trial of Danyo Sellers, 19, who was 16 at the time he is accused of shooting out of a car toward people outside of Martha’s Boulevard Tavern on Southern Boulevard in Youngstown in 2023, killing Amya.

YOUNGSTOWN — Jaismon Morris had driven her daughter, Amya Monserrat, 15, and a friend of her daughter to a birthday party for a 16-year-old at Martha’s Boulevard Tavern on Southern Boulevard April 15, 2023, but started to become concerned.

Morris was talking to a bartender and learned that someone with a gun had tried to get into the party, Morris testified Monday as the first witness in the Danyo Sellers murder trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. Sellers, now 19, was 16 at the time.

Morris said she felt staying inside was the best place to be safe. That is what she, Amya and her friend did. But later, when the party was ending, it seemed safe to go outside. It was warm out, and Morris was sitting in her car. The roughly 30 kids went outside.

“They were socializing,” she said. “The kids were talking to (Amya). They were coming and talking to me, saying Hi. I had just had a baby, so I was kind of excited to be outside and see all the kids,” she said.

She looked to the side of her car and saw a person with a gun in his hand looking toward Southern Boulevard, she said.

“Everyone was looking toward Southern Boulevard. And that is when they made me aware that ‘Hey, there is a car that keeps circling,'” she said. She did not like what was happening.

“I didn’t want to be stuck where he was by me, so I circled around the parking lot and I had thought ‘I can leave now,’ but I didn’t want to leave my daughter.” She drove around the parking lot and ended up close to where she was just before that. She said, “As soon as I stopped, that’s when all the shots started coming.”

Morris was looking at Amya and her friend “running towards me,” she said. The two girls were “holding hands,” and Amya was in back. “I felt the gunshot blow past my face. I could see they both hopped in my front seat,” with Amya on top of the other girl.

“I looked over, and Amya’s face kind of went to the side,” she said. “So instantly I knew she was hit. So I just got out of the car immediately and went to the passenger side.” She said, “Call 911. The kids started just coming over, trying to help her. There was some man with a tourniquet. He tried to save my baby,” she said, crying.

She ran up to the first police officer she saw and told him her daughter had been hit by a bullet. When Morris told him she witnessed the shooting, the officer made her get into the back of a police cruiser. “My daughter was just sitting out there,” Morris said. The police took Morris to the hospital, where another daughter told her that Amya had died.

Assistant Mahoning County Prosecutor Katherine Jones told jurors in her opening statement that kids were having a good time at that party until a car with four people inside was seen “circling” the tavern. Among them were Sellers and co-defendant Saun Peterson, now 23, and two people in the back seat. Peterson was driving. Sellers was in the front passenger seat.

“The evidence will show that as that car circled the parking lot multiple times, tensions escalated, and then gunfire erupted. The evidence will show that the only person in that vehicle who had a gun, the only person who fired from that vehicle was this defendant,” she said of Sellers.

Defense attorney Nick Cerni focused his remarks on what Peterson and Sellers experienced that night. Peterson, Cerni said, was circling the tavern because of his sister being there and Peterson’s uncertainty about whether he needed to pick her up or not.

Cerni said that while that “saga is going on,” Sellers “thinks nothing of it. The party (at the tavern) starts to get suspicious about this circling vehicle, and you will see what can only be described as an ambush — people taking defensive positions, setting up. The state’s evidence will show multiple shots, gunfire and (bullet shell) casings coming from the parking lot of the restaurant.”

Cerni said the gunfire “is directed to my client’s car,” and Sellers was in the passenger seat. Cerni said gunfire was “raining toward that vehicle.” Peterson drove past the tavern and made a U-turn back toward the tavern. Cerni said there will be “conflicting testimony” from the people in the car about who else was in the car.

“But one thing is for sure, 16-year-old Danyo Sellers in the passenger seat of that vehicle that had been fired upon, never had a chance. He would have had to bail, jump out of a moving vehicle or remain in the vehicle.

“He was placed into a life-and-death situation. When Saun decided to return toward that scene where the gunfire started — maybe because he was worried about his sister — I don’t know. But Danyo never had a choice,” and “Everyone in that vehicle is entitled to self-defense,” Cerni said.

The trial resumes this morning in the courtroom of Judge Anthony D’Apolito.