Kensington man guilty of murder in deadly street brawl

Luis "Bebe" Soto may not have intended to kill anyone when he shot into the crowd during a 2013 Kensington street brawl, but the shots he fired still ended a bystander's life, a Philadelphia jury concluded Monday as it convicted him of third-degree murder.

But the panel cleared him of a more serious first-degree murder count in the April 9 shooting death of Amanda Martinez, a charge that would have resulted in an automatic life sentence.

Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega said he would seek a maximum punishment of 57 to 114 years in prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Dec. 4.

Soto, dressed in a purple plaid dress shirt and sweater vest, had no visible reaction as the verdict was announced.

The one-time drug-gang member, who had been out of prison just three months at the time of the shooting, had insisted during testimony last week that he was innocent and watched the fight from afar, fleeing at the sounds of gunfire.

His lawyer, Jack McMahon, said Soto would appeal.

"Juries do what they do, and I respect that," he said. "I'm happy that the guy's not getting life in prison."

The verdict - reached after less than four hours of deliberations - came after a tense trial, in which witnesses had to be threatened with contempt to compel their testimony, and Common Pleas Court Judge Glenn B. Bronson at one point demanded photo IDs from all courtroom spectators after multiple complaints of threatening behavior.

As prosecutors described it, the 2013 brawl began with two teen girls fighting in the intersection of Somerset and Lee Streets and quickly escalated into a chaotic melee, with an estimated 30 neighbors joining in the fracas and 100 more watching from the sidelines.

It ended with Martinez shot and bleeding to death in the street, just shy of her 21st birthday.

Three other men - Soto's half-brother, Jose Torres, then 22; Carl Walden, 33; and Larry Robinson, 18 - were also shot, crimes for which Soto was convicted Monday on three counts of aggravated assault and related gun charges.

Investigators canvassed the neighborhood for days, but only two people reluctantly came forward and agreed to give statements. At trial, however, they told strikingly different stories.

Madeline Soberal, 47, cowered on the witness stand, repeatedly wept, and refused multiple times to answer questions. Eventually, she told jurors she saw two shooters that day - including Soto - firing indiscriminately into the crowd.

The other witness - Edgar Quinones, 31 - described Soto as a lone gunman.

Parts of both witnesses' testimony conflicted with statements they had earlier given police.

Vega, the prosecutor, blamed the tense hold crime had on their community, saying both were fearful to cooperate with police or testify in court.

"These are good people, but they feel like they can't get involved," he said.

McMahon, however, called Vega's description of the terrified neighbors "irrational" and "demeaning" - a smokescreen invoked to paper over glaring inconsistencies in the government's case.

Prosecutors spoke of their fearful silence "as if those people in that neighborhood are just savages that have no care or feeling about a young woman's death at all," the lawyer said.

Vega insisted their fear was real.

"That neighborhood is held hostage by a few bad people - and you wonder why people don't get involved with the police," he said. "There is a community that is grieving for that little girl. But here's the thing: She's dead and she's gone. They still have to live there."

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