Daughter: Floyd sent threatening texts to victim

Published 2:40 pm Thursday, September 26, 2013

Cedric Floyd sent threatening text messages to Tina Roshell Jones’ daughter in the days before she was killed, the daughter testified Thursday in the opening day of testimony in Floyd’s capital murder trial.

One, Kytoria Lawson said, was “don’t make him do something he was going to regret.”

Lawson testified that Floyd woke her the night of the murder by coming into her room and demanding her car keys.

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“It was like he was in a rush, like he was mad,” Lawson said. “He was yelling, asking for my keys.”

On cross-examination, defense attorney Kevin McKinley asked about the light in the room and the duration of Floyd’s time in the room.

“It was fast. I got a pretty good look at him,” she said, identifying the person as Floyd.

After taking a week and a half to select jurors, attorneys in the Floyd’s capital murder case began opening arguments Thursday morning.

Floyd, of Atmore, is charged with the murder of Jones, his girlfriend, in 2011. She was shot at her Atmore home.

He has already been in prison since March, sentenced on a promoting prison contraband conviction.

He is also charged in an incident in which he escaped from the Escambia County Jail in October 2012. He was captured a day later in Pensacola.

The Escambia County District Attorney’s office is recused from the case; the attorney general’s office is prosecuting. Local attorneys had represented Floyd in the past as public defenders.