Trial in child's shooting goes to jury

Tension gripped the hallway of the Criminal Justice Center yesterday as two camps of relatives waited out the verdict of a jury weighing the fate of four men accused of paralyzing a 6-year-old child in a gun battle two years ago.

Deliberations began at the end of a two-week trial before Common Pleas Court Judge Rayford Means. The four were accused of shooting Jabar Wright in the back of the head during an effort to ambush his grandfather, Benjamin Wright, 42, as Wright and family members drove through the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood in January 2006.

More than a dozen members of the families of Donte Rollins, 20; Raheem Collins, 24; Chris Powell, 19, and Kevin Norris, 28, clogged the hallway outside the courtroom as the jury worked in a back room behind the court chamber. All face four counts of attempted murder, aggravated assault and firearms offenses.

Relatives of the defendants claimed that the four men were nowhere near the site of the shooting and that they were the true victims of the shooting.

"They've got the wrong boys," said Kelly Russ, 30 of Strawberry Mansion, a relative of Norris'.

One of the alleged shooters, Rollins, who is defended by attorney Nino Tinari, has been released on bail, and yesterday sat on the hallway benches with his relatives.

"I wasn't there," Rollins said. "It's crazy."

Defense attorneys relied on witness alibis and surveillance tapes as evidence that their clients were telling the truth.

"I'm going to demand a public apology from the city," Russ said.

The families of the defendants insisted that Wright, who police said was the intended target of the shooting, should have had better sense than to drive his family through a section of the city they called a "war zone."

"Why would he ride his grandson into that neighborhood?" said Kim Bond, a relative of Powell's. Bond said that as a result of the incident, Powell's life had been "ruined" by false accusations that derailed his promising future as a basketball player.

These relatives said that they, too, in the words of one of them, were "devastated" by the injuries suffered by Jabar, who is now 7.

Jabar's mother, Alicia Wright, 24, was not convinced.

"They're not devastated," she said as she walked down the hallway and through the crowd of supporters for the defendants.

Wearing a floor-length black shawl, she said they had not been through what she has had to endure - watching her paralyzed son flatline three times since the shooting. She said that doctors had installed a pacemaker to help, but that he is still too unstable to leave his group home. She said she and her two small daughters were terrified of what might happen medically.

"I just want justice," she said.