Allen Lewayne Meadows and Renardo Thomas were convicted of the offenses of burglary, aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. Following the denial of their motions for new trial, they appeal. In Case Number A03A1582, we affirm the trial court’s denial of Meadows’s motion for new trial. In Case Number A03A1583, however, we conclude that the trial court should have granted the motion for new trial filed by Thomas. Construed in favor of the jury’s verdict, the State presented evidence that the victim and his wife lived in an apartment located at 923 Renaissance Way in Rockdale County. They were sitting inside their living room at approximately 3:20 a.m. on February 11, 2002, when their front door suddenly burst open. The victim saw two men outside the apartment, one of whom walked two or three steps inside his doorway and shot once or twice. The victim returned fire with his own gun, shooting four or five times, and the two assailants ran away. The victim could not identify either assailant and stated only that the man who shot at him was wearing a hooded sweater. Earlier in the evening, because a break-in had occurred in his apartment approximately two weeks before this incident, the victim had placed a chair weighted with dumbbells against the door. The victim had also activated his burglar alarm, but the alarm did not sound when the door burst open. Evidence was presented showing that the alarm functioned through use of telephone lines and that the phone lines to the entire apartment building had been disabled.
A neighbor testified that the sound of gunfire awakened him at approximately 3:00 a.m. on February 11. He had a view of the “the breeze way area where the two gentlemen ran out of,” and he saw two men run into the parking lot. One man left the scene in a large sport utility vehicle, and the other left in a small red pickup truck. Another resident, an off-duty DeKalb County police officer who lived in the complex and had a “panoramic view” of the area, also was awakened by gunshots. He saw a black man running away from Building 900. The man got into a small red truck, which temporarily became stuck in some fencing. The truck eventually left the scene, followed closely by a sport utility vehicle.
