By Tim Doherty
American Staff Writer
PURVIS – The Lamar County coroner testified today that he was told that James Neal May came home from a night of drinking at a Hattiesburg restaurant, locked his girlfriend out of his home and she then heard a shot.
May was found dead in his bed in his mobile home on West Fourth Street. His death was ruled a suicide.
That was on May 1, 2002.
But May’s family pushed to have the investigation reopened and, in October 2007, May’s girlfriend, Jennifer Wardle, 29, of Brooklyn, was charged with his murder.
She went on trial Monday in Lamar County Circuit Court.
Coroner Blake Davis, who was a deputy coroner in 2002, testified this morning before a packed courtroom that it was his assessment that the death was a suicide.
May died from a single shot to the head.
He said the body was sent to the crime lab in Jackson for an autopsy and the lab’s assessment of the cause of death was suicide.
Davis said he was told by investigators at the scene that May had been drinking at Crescent City Grill on the night of his death.
He was told that May came home and kicked Wardle out of the trailer at 5193 W. Fourth St. and locked the door.
He said she told investigators that minutes later she heard a single gunshot.
Wardle was pregnant with May’s baby at the time of his death. Their son was born on May 18, 2002, less than three weeks after May’s death.
The case is being prosecuted by the Mississippi Attorney General’s office.
May, 22, of Vicksburg, was a senior at the University of Southern Mississippi.
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