Durham man submits Alford plea, avoids prison in 2022 fatal shooting outside club
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Armani Walker entered an Alford plea to involuntary manslaughter in a fatal shooting.
- The April 2022 shooting outside a Durham club killed 22-year-old Daniel Slack.
- The shooting may have been a revenge attempt for Walker’s stabbing weeks before.
Armani Walker’s voice never shook as he gazed across a Durham courtroom Tuesday and apologized to the mother of the man he’d killed nearly four years ago .
During a roughly 50-minute hearing, Assistant District Attorney Mary Jude Darrow and public defender Idrissa Smith wove a tale of two young men, both of their futures shattered by gun violence when one turned a gun on the other outside a Durham nightclub .
Daniel Slack, 22, was fatally shot April 9, 2022, when someone in a white van near Luna Nightclub opened fire, striking him in the back and injuring two of his friends, Darrow said.
Slack, who was from Los Angeles, was set to celebrate his 23rd birthday in 10 days. His mother planned to spend her Mother’s Day at his graduation from Raleigh’s Shaw University.
Walker, now 29, was arrested almost three months later on charges of murder, attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, The News & Observer reported. He remained in Durham County jail until January 2025, when his murder trial ended in a hung jury, court records show. At that point, he posted a reduced $125,000 bond, and remained on house arrest without issues until Tuesday.
Walker submitted an Alford plea, meaning he maintained his innocence but admitted there was enough evidence to potentially convict him, to a charge of involuntary manslaughter and two charges of assault inflicting serious bodily injury.
In exchange for his plea, the state dismissed two other charges against him and agreed to a sentence of a minimum of a year and two months and a maximum of 33 months in prison, with credit for 1,024 days spent in jail. That meant Walker wouldn’t spend time in prison.
Darrow described the shooting as an attempt at revenge, with Slack an innocent bystander; Walker had been stabbed in the back two weeks prior, and he allegedly suspected one of the victims injured in the nightclub shooting was responsible, she said Tuesday.
No arrests were ever made in Walker’s stabbing, which Smith said gave his client post-traumatic stress disorder and drove him to search for the perpetrator after Durham police “ignored” him, even initially arresting him in the confusion.
Smith suggested Tuesday that Walker didn’t actually shoot at Slack and his friends, but claimed he’d done so to get “street cred.” Walker reportedly bragged about the shooting to a girl he went on a date with and tried to sell the gun involved, according to Darrow.
Regardless, both sides agreed that Slack was simply caught in the crossfire as he tried to protect a female friend he viewed as a sister from the hail of bullets.
“Daniel Slack is a true victim,” Smith said, going on to describe the shooting as “tragic,” “senseless” and “what we all hope to eliminate in our society.”
Walker, a graduate of Riverside High School, had no prior convictions and decided to submit an Alford plea to bring closure to his family and Slack’s, according to Smith. The defense attorney said his client was an “upstanding young man” who he hoped would take advantage of his new freedom.
Walker apologized to Slack’s family in court, looking at Slack’s mother, Lashonda Lewis Slack, as he did so.
“This is a very tragic situation,” Walker said. “I prayed for you guys this whole entire time.”
But the grieving mother never met his gaze, her eyes trained on Judge Timothy Wilson, whom she’d delivered a victim impact statement to minutes earlier.
She’d spoken of the “guiding light” that her only biological child was, of his volunteer work in Los Angeles’ Skid Row and his passion for church and family. Daniel was her “everything,” and life could never be the same without him, she said.
But it was Walker she’d addressed last.
“Armani Walker, may God have mercy on your soul for the wrong you did on April 9th, 2022,” she said.
