Five years after stabbing and strangling his former girlfriend, 44-year-old Prentis John Hill has gone to trial on charges of murder.
Hill met his former girlfriend Shannon Pearce Likens when they were patients at College Hospital in Costa Mesa’s mental health department. Likens — a divorced mother of three — had repeatedly suffered from substance abuse issues and repeated attempts of suicide, the OC Register reported. Hill, similarly, exhibited a past of mental health-related concerns. The two shared a one-bedroom apartment on West Fourth St. in Santa Ana.
Likens’ ex-husband James Robert “Bob” Likens IV believed this to be an improvement for his ex-wife.
“It sounds like she was doing better. She got an apartment and a job and she was on the up-and-up,” Likens IV said, according to Hey Socal.
At around 11:30 a.m. on Dec. 16, 2017, neighbors reported hearing loud arguments and repeated thuds coming from Hill and Likens’ apartment. In his opening statements on Sept. 29, Senior Deputy District Attorney Mark Birney described the response of neighbors Brandy Fajardo and her son Dylan. When they heard “a woman screaming for help,” they called 911, Birney told the jury.
Hill emerged from the apartment in a blood-splattered shirt shortly after, seemingly unaffected by the commotion. When Fajardo mentioned that the police had been called, Hill reportedly shrugged it off.
“He said something to the effect of, ‘Sorry for the noise,’” Birney said in a statement to the jury, according to Patch.
Hill reportedly drove away before police and other first responders arrived at the apartment building. Likens was found wedged between the bed and a bookcase. Attempts to revive her were unsuccessful and paramedics declared Likens deceased on arrival.
Likens had been stabbed several times with a flat-head screwdriver and then strangled with a New England Patriots jacket, reportedly her own, OC Weekly reported. Hill later checked into the same hospital where he met Likens and confessed to her murder.
According to Birney, Hill told on-call triage nurse Joseph Baker, “‘I killed my girlfriend … She made me really angry,’” Birney alleged.
Police were called to arrest Hill at around 6 p.m. the same day. Hill has remained in custody for nearly five years and was also charged with assaulting another inmate.
Both Birney and Hill’s attorney Mitch Timbanard gave their opening statements in front of a jury on Sept. 29, and the jury spent two and a half days deliberating over the results. Hill was found guilty of second-degree murder with a sentencing enhancement for the personal use of a deadly weapon on Oct. 12.
During the trial, Hill once again admitted to the murder, leaving his defense to argue that the crime had been provoked and should be charged as manslaughter instead of murder — a distinction that would have guaranteed less jail time for Hill.
Second-degree murder charges will protect Hill from a life sentence, but he faces a maximum of 25 years in prison. Hill is scheduled to return to court for sentencing on Oct. 28.
Scarlett Roberts is a City News Intern for the fall 2022 quarter. She can be reached at sorobert@uci.edu.
