Md. funeral director convicted after killing pallbearer at cemetery
Wilson Wesley Chavis claimed he acted in self-defense at the burial of 10-year-old Arianna Davis.
February 13, 2025 at 7:14 p.m. EST
A Prince George’s County funeral home owner was convicted of second-degree murder Thursday for shooting a pallbearer during the burial service of a 10-year-old girl who’d been killed by gunfire weeks earlier.
Wilson Wesley Chavis, 50, was paid almost $20,000 to provide proper funeral and burial services for Arianna Davis, one of D.C.’s youngest shooting victims, in June 2023, prosecutors said.
But before she could be laid to rest, he said, he shot 30-year-old Ronald Steven Banks, a family friend of Arianna’s, near the girl’s casket at Washington National Cemetery in Suitland, Md. Banks was taken to a hospital, where he died.
Chavis testified during the week-long trial in Prince George’s County Circuit Court that he didn’t want to kill anyone but was defending himself during a fight.
Prosecutors said Chavis came armed to assert his authority over people from a rival funeral home at the burial site.
“He had a score to settle,” Assistant State’s Attorney William Porter said. “He didn’t come there to work a funeral … he felt that someone was moving in on his territory … unfortunately, Arianna Davis got in the way. That’s where the battleground was.”
Jurors heard two versions of the burial service on June 6, 2023.
As prosecutors told it, Chavis hadn’t planned on attending Arianna’s services. James Zafiropulos, Chavis’s defense attorney, agreed, saying he had spent nights restructuring Arianna’s body for the services and it was “emotional.”
Prosecutors said Chavis came only after someone called to tell him that people from a funeral company he had long-standing issues with were at the cemetery.
Zafiropulos said he showed up because they needed a licensed mortician at the cemetery.
He arrived wearing a hat that said, “F--- around and find out,” Assistant State’s Attorney Dora Myles-Moore said. He had two dogs along with a large knife in his car. Chavis testified he was also wearing a knife on him and carried 30 bullets — 10 loaded and two separate magazines.
“That’s how I roll every day,” he said in court when asked why he was so heavily armed for a child’s funeral.
Chavis immediately started fighting with a man affiliated with Freeman Funeral Services, prosecutors said. However, Chavis’s defense counsel said the man spit on him.
Once up a hill and at the gravesite, Chavis began directing the pallbearers on how to move the casket. No one recognized who he was, because he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and hat, rather than his usual funeral attire, prosecutors said.
The bump that came next roiled both sides.
Zafiropulos said that while struggling with the weight of the casket, Chavis was pushed back into the pastor leading the graveside service. One of the pallbearers then gave a “menacing look.”
Porter said Chavis intentionally pushed the pastor, who fell after a second shove. The casket began to shake, worrying the pallbearers.
They confronted Chavis, saying he was disrespecting the family. Chavis refused to leave, saying, “I own this body … I worked on this body,” Porter said.
He pulled a gun after tripping over a concrete vault lid next to the grave, according to charging documents.
Chavis fired a shot as he landed, police said in the charging documents. That bullet struck Banks in the back. Chavis fired another shot as he stood up, hitting a woman. She survived.
Zafiropulos said Banks threw the first punch before the group joined in to beat Chavis. Chavis fired his gun in self-defense after seeing Banks, the closest person to him, take out a knife, Zafiropulos said.
Chavis told detectives in a recorded interview that he was crouched down and took 2-3 seconds to think to himself, “Is this really happening to me? You gotta pull this gun, man.”
“When I actually pulled the trigger, I was being attacked,” Chavis said in court. “I was taking hits. I was protecting myself.”
In the recorded police interview shown during the trial, Chavis told detectives he fled the cemetery after the shooting because he feared the opposing group would get guns and shoot back. He intended to drop off his two dogs, which accompanied him everywhere he went, before turning himself in.
He didn’t get far.
Minutes after Chavis left the cemetery, a Morningside Police Department officer stopped him and took him into custody, police said.
Porter argued in court that Chavis didn’t tell police he saw Banks brandish a knife. A knife at the scene was used to cut open Banks’s bloody shirt.
Banks was not affiliated with the other funeral home.
And his father, Issac Lambert, testified that his son couldn’t have balled his right hand into a fist during the confrontation because of a birth defect to his arm.
Banks had a son who was 9 years old at the time of the shooting and worked at Washington Hospital Center, Lambert said at the time of the incident. His family declined to comment during the trial.
Chavis owns a funeral company called Compassion and Serenity based in Clinton, Maryland. Court records showed a peace order filed a few weeks before the shooting by Freeman Funeral Services against Chavis over alleged threats toward staffers, stemming from an unspecified event years ago.
A hearing for that order was scheduled on the day of the shooting. People associated with Freeman Funeral Services who attended the trial declined to comment.
“I don’t give a damn if I went to jail for life, I defended myself and I’ll do it again,” Chavis said to police detectives on video shown in court.
After Thursday’s hearing, Jennifer Carter, Chavis’s girlfriend, said an “innocent man” was being held in jail.
“It’s unfair,” Carter said. “This whole system needs to be reformed.”
Chavis took a deep breath before the jury delivered the verdict after more than three hours of deliberation. He was also found guilty of use of a firearm during the commission of a felony and reckless endangerment. They acquitted him of first-degree murder, attempted murder, attempted manslaughter and assault.
During a sentencing hearing scheduled for July, he faces up to 65 years in prison.
