By TERENCE CORRIGAN - Special to the T-G
On Monday this week, Briana Stipe described in horrific detail the June 19, 2020 murder of her friend and roommate Adrienne Cox, 30, in their apartment on Neeley Avenue in Shelbyville. Stipe, 24, was the state’s only witness in the preliminary hearing in the first-degree murder case against Steven Lokey, 31.
Lokey was living at the apartment where the murder took place. Lokey is also charged with several lesser offenses including theft of a 2005 black Chevrolet Tahoe used to evade capture by law enforcement and for attempting to bring methamphetamine into jail on July 27, 2020.
Preliminary hearings are conducted in General Sessions court to determine if the state has sufficient evidence to take the case to a grand jury. If the grand jury then determines that the charges are warranted — issuing a true bill — the case goes to trial in Circuit Court.
The case against Lokey will go before Bedford County’s grand jury on Jan. 20 and will likely be arraigned that same day.
Cox was strangled with an electrical cord, stabbed twice, once in the head and once in the left side of her chest and sustained blunt force injuries to the head.
Stipe said she sat frozen in fear on a bed as her then-boyfriend, Lokey, strangled and stabbed Cox first while they struggled on the bed and then during the struggle they fell to the floor. Stipe said she feared for life as Lokey had threatened to kill her and Cox.
When questioned by Lokey’s court-appointed defense attorney Robert Marlow, as to why she did nothing to try and stop the murder — like screaming for help or breaking a window to escape — Stipe replied that Lokey “told me if I interfered, Chris (Gunsell) would slit my throat.”
Chris Gunsell is also known by his nickname, Diego, Stipe said. He is charged with criminal responsibility for first degree murder.
According to Stipe, Lokey called Gunsell, of Emily Lane in Bell Buckle, to the apartment that night as the incident evolved. According to Stipe, Lokey said to Gunsell on the phone “I’m going to need some help burying some bodies.”
The first round of violence that night started when Lokey and Cox got into a fight over a clogged hypodermic needle, Stipe said. Stipe said she and Cox regularly injected heroin. Lokey’s drug of choice was methamphetamine, she said.
The medical examiner’s toxicology report, determined that Cox had morphine, fentanyl, amphetamine and methamphetamine in her bloodstream when she was murdered.
During the fight over the clogged needle, Stipe said, Lokey struck Cox and then after injecting himself with methamphetamine, he became enraged because he believed Cox and Stipe were going to report his acts of violence against Cox to police and he would immediately be put back in jail.
Stipe testified that both she and Cox tried to calm Lokey by assuring him they would not call police. He testified that before the fatal attack began, Lokey went to the kitchen and brought knives into the bedroom.
Then, according to Stipe, Lokey wrapped a black electrical cord around his wrists and attacked Cox on the bed where she and Cox were seated. As they struggled, Stipe testified, they fell to the floor and hit a dresser causing the knives to fall to the floor.
Cox, at 5-foot-5 inches and 114 pounds, allegedly fought hard but she stood little chance against Lokey who, when he was incarcerated at Hardeman County Correctional Facility, was reportedly 6-foot-4 inches and weighed around 220 pounds.
During the struggle Gunsell allegedly stood outside the bedroom door watching. Lokey had Gunsell help him carry Cox’s lifeless body to the bathroom and put her in the tub. Lokey later choked Cox again, to be sure she was dead, Stipe said.
During the attack, Stipe testified, she mouthed the word “help” to Gunsell and he replied mouthing that “it’s OK.”
When the attack was over, Stipe and Gunsell wrapped clothing in bedsheets and the threesome fled in Gunsell’s car. From the crime scene, they went to a woman’s home (identified in court as named Faith).
The woman agreed to let Lokey use her Chevrolet Tahoe to go and get her methamphetamine. Lokey, Gunsell and Stipe, however, did not go looking for methamphetamine but instead went to “Diego’s” house, then to a motel in Shelbyville.
Lokey and Stipe were finally captured in Moore County, after stealing another vehicle in Decherd.
In the Decherd auto theft, the vehicle owner was giving Lokey and Stipe a ride to a hotel where they were staying in Monteagle. During the ride, Lokey grabbed the vehicle owner by the neck and forced her out of the car.
Lokey was finally captured in Manchester at 4 a.m. on June 22, two days after Cox was murdered. He attempted to elude police by jumping into a moving tractor-trailer.
Lokey, at the time of the murder, had been released 48 hours earlier from jail on his own recognizance (no bond) in Rutherford County. Lokey had been jailed on a charge of probation violation.
The new charges in Rutherford County were for auto burglaries. The earlier crimes he was found guilty of were aggravated assault, two counts of theft of property and vandalism. His bond is set at $1 million.
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