Purchase of knife is revealed in Slidell murder case

A week before a Slidell woman was stabbed to death then set on fire inside her  apartment, one of the three people accused in her killing went to an Academy Sports to buy a knife. Andrew Sumner, 19, put several other items on his mother's credit card, got $50 in cash back, then paid for the knife in a separate cash transaction, according to testimony at a hearing this week in a St. Tammany Parish courtroom.

Slidell fatal fire.jpgView full sizeSlidell police investigator Bill McCormick looks for clues to an early-morning fire Feb. 23 after a woman was found dead inside her burned out apartment at Couer de Ville Apartments on Bayou Lane in Slidell.

It was all caught by the store's surveillance cameras.

Sumner, his pregnant 17-year-old girlfriend Katelyn Lusich and a friend, 21-year-old Devin Baham, were all booked with first-degree murder in the killing of 32-year-old Ashley King, who was stabbed 13 times before her body was later set on fire.

Dwight Doskey, Sumner's defense attorney, argued at a preliminary hearing Wednesday that second-degree murder would be a more appropriate charge. Judge William Burris declined, citing sufficient probable cause for first-degree murder.

Sumner was the only one of the three who knew King, according to testimony at Wednesday's hearing. On Feb. 22 he went to her apartment on Bayou Lane in Slidell and bought two pills for $50, according to testimony from Slidell Police Sgt. Jim Davis.

Baham needed money, Lusich reportedly later told police. So he and Sumner planned to return to the apartment that afternoon. Sumner was to get them through the door while Baham was to "hit her or hold her down," Davis testified. The two men planned to split the proceeds, Baham getting 70 percent, Sumner taking 30 percent.


Lusich reportedly told police that she drove Sumner and Baham to the apartment. When Baham got out, she said, he was carrying a roll of duct tape. She waited in the car.

Sumner came back out, visibly nervous, and said something like "things didn't go as planned," Davis testified she said.

He had around $800 cash, his 30 percent, she told officers, and she knew he had pill bottles too because she could hear them rattling, she said.

Sumner gave her the cash and told her to put it in a lock box at his house, then instructed her to wash both his and her clothes, she reportedly told the officer.

Later that afternoon, she looked out the window, she told police, and saw Sumner and Baham siphoning gas from a boat parked in the driveway and putting it into a plastic container. The two men left again in the middle of the night and returned around 5 a.m., she told police.

They woke her up and Sumner said something like "we figured it out, everything went smoothly this time," the detective said she told him.

Firefighters, who arrived at the apartment fire around 5:30 a.m., extinguished the flames and found King's charred body, which they suspect was doused with an accelerant.

Sumner told detectives that Baham had asked him to buy the knife and he never expected King would get hurt.

Doskey argued that Sumner's involvement in the killing did not rise to the level of first-degree murder, as he went there for a robbery and without the intent to do King bodily harm.

He "was surprised when Devin Baham turned it into a killing," Doskey argued.

Baham's attorney, Martin E. Regan Jr., did not return a call requesting comment.

Assistant District Attorney Bruce Dearing, though, said the killing was committed during an armed robbery and it doesn't matter who was actually wielding the knife.

Burris agreed. He pointed to Sumner's actions the week before the killing: he bought a knife and went out of his way to pay for it in cash.

Sumner and Baham are both still being held at the St. Tammany Parish Jail on $1 million bonds.

Sumner's family posted the $750,000 bond for his 17-year-old girlfriend, whose baby is due next month.

Her attorney, Rachel Yazbeck, said she waived her preliminary hearing and is awaiting the case's presentation to a grand jury.

Claire Galofaro can be reached at or 985.898.4828.