A fatal shooting inside a Cincinnati Shake Shack that began as an argument over a parking spot has ended with an acquittal, after a jury concluded the man who fired the shot was acting in self-defense.
Antwoine McCants, 56, walked out of a Hamilton County courtroom on Sept. 25 after a jury acquitted him on all counts, deciding he was justified when he shot and killed Christopher Stallworth inside a Shake Shack near the University of Cincinnati.
Stallworth, 41, died in June 2025 after what prosecutors called a “misunderstanding” over a parking spot on Calhoun Street. Surveillance cameras inside the restaurant captured the shooting.
Prosecutors said McCants aimed a gun at Stallworth and pulled the trigger while the two talked about an encounter on the street, and that Stallworth was backing away with his hands in his pockets. The gun didn’t fire because there was no round in the chamber, so McCants racked it and shot Stallworth in the chest. Stallworth staggered onto the patio and collapsed in the bushes, then died at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
His attorneys told a different story. They said McCants and his wife had stopped to try the restaurant while out riding their three-wheeled motorcycles, and that Stallworth followed them inside “intending to retaliate” after McCants’ wife shouted “Slow down” at Stallworth’s car. Attorney Lindsay Arway said Stallworth sat across from McCants on the phone, telling someone to “get on down” to Shake Shack because a “dude with a gun threatened my girl.” McCants opened fire, she said, when Stallworth approached and pulled something from his right front pocket, which a court filing said held a gun.
The case turned on Stallworth’s fiancée, Atiya Muhammadel. She first told police she was armed and pulled a gun that night, but at trial she said Stallworth brought her gun into the restaurant and never drew it. She testified she didn’t know he was carrying it until it fell out of his pocket as he collapsed, and that she picked it up to fire at McCants, who had already left.
Police later found the gun on the patio. The jury sided with McCants after a five-day trial.
“Antwoine never wavered that he was acting in self-defense,” Arway said in a statement, “and we are grateful for the efforts and consideration of the jury in reaching a not guilty verdict.”
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