Boyfriend of shooting victim held on murder charges
Claimed shooting was an accident, witness says
UPPER DARBY » A township man has been held over for trial in the shooting death of his girlfriend earlier this year in the house they shared on State Road.
Marlon Wright, 31, of the first block of North State Road, is charged with criminal homicide, murder in the first and third degree, possessing an instrument of crime and possessing a firearm with an altered serial number in the March 28 death of Chrisian Chambers.
Magisterial District Judge Harry J. Karapalides heard from a cousin of the victim and two police officers during a preliminary hearing in district court Monday.
The cousin, who hails from Jamaica, told Assistant District Attorney Michael Hill that she was visiting in March but that she did not spend much time at the house, where Wright and Chambers lived with Wright’s brother. Chambers’ brother owned the house, but did not live there, she said.
The cousin said Wright was abusive to Chambers and had once struck her in the head three times with a gun, requiring stitches. Wright allegedly kept a gun in the couch, she said.
On the day of Chambers’ death, the cousin said the couple had been arguing since about 1 p.m. and that Wright at one point threw a drink in Chambers’ face, then hit her three times in the head with the cup, but not hard enough to draw blood.
The two were still arguing when the cousin said she left to meet a friend at 69th Street shortly before 2 p.m. During the walk, the cousin said she saw a lot of police cars heading in the opposite direction and tried to call her cousin.
Getting no response, the cousin said she called Wright, who answered and assured her everything was fine. She said she then tried to call Chambers another four times without luck before calling Wright again, who reassured the cousin a second time that all was well.
Upper Darby Police Officer Michael Crispin testified that he was called to the scene at 33 N. State Road shortly before 2 p.m. for a report of a shooting. A neighbor said they heard a loud banging noise, he said.
The front door was locked and officers used a battering ram to gain entry, Crispin said. On the first floor, they smelled a heavy odor of marijuana and found a blunt still burning in an ashtray in the kitchen, he said.
Crispin led a pack of about four or five officers up the stairs and first saw the victim lying in a pool of blood in the front bedroom, he said. She was breathing and flailing her arms weakly, he said. After officers cleared the floor, he administered CPR until paramedics were brought in.
Crispin told defense attorney Marni Jo Snyder, representing Wright with Michael Dugan, that Chambers did not speak to him. As the bedroom began to fill up with people, two officers moved a bench-like ottoman at the foot of the bed, revealing a magazine to a handgun, Crispin said. A 9mm handgun locked with its slide back and missing a magazine was found in a dresser drawer that had been left open, he said. The gun had blood on it, Crispin said.
Chambers was transported to Lankenau Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead at 5:22 p.m. that day.
The cousin said she was with Chambers’ mother the next day when Wright called her, claiming the shooting had been an accident and asking to see the victim.
“He said him and Chrissy was tousling for the gun and he didn’t know that one (round) was in the chamber,” she said. “He clicked the button to let the clip fall out and the clip fell out and the gun went off. He was crying and saying he was sorry.”
Upper Darby Detective Francis George said he arrived at the scene after the victim had been transported and retrieved the gun, which had a shell casing lodged inside. The serial number had been obliterated but a technician was able to restore it and determine it belonged to a Philadelphia man who claimed to have no knowledge it was missing, George said.
George said a “drop test” was performed on the firearm and that it did not discharge when dropped. Hill added that a report indicated the trigger requires more than six pounds of pressure to fire.
George described still images in court that he said were taken from surveillance videos at the corner of 54th and Media streets in Philadelphia about 35 or 45 minutes after the initial 911 call. These allegedly showed Wright parking and exiting from a black Infiniti Q50 with a duffel bag and no shoes on, then meeting with a woman who put the bag into a white Infiniti before they both got into a third, grey Infiniti driven by someone else and left the area. Wright had changed clothes and put on sneakers at some point offscreen, George said.
George said Wright’s wife informed investigators that she had moved the black Infiniti around the corner to 54th Street and Lansdowne Avenue, where Philadelphia police were able to retrieve it. That vehicle, which is registered to Wright’s wife, was taken back to the Upper Darby police garage where investigators found blood on the driver’s side door, the ceiling near some buttons and on paperwork in the glove compartment, George said.
Sample swabs of the blood have been collected and sent to a lab, he said, but no results have come back yet. Swabs were also taken on the gun for DNA, according to George, but he was unsure if it was also tested for fingerprints.
The cousin reported that Wright drove a black Infiniti and that he had parked it behind the North State Road address March 28. A video from a nearby pizza restaurant showed a black sedan leaving the area around the time of the shooting, but the make and model could not be determined, George said.
Wright’s wife, who placed the initial 911 call after Wright told her that his girlfriend had shot herself, provided police with his cell phone number, according to an affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. Repeated calling of this number yielded no results, said George, but police did finally make contact with a person who said they found the phone in the intersection of Laurence and Tobacco roads, near the crime scene.
Snyder argued at the conclusion of the hearing that the commonwealth had not made out the elements for murder charges because there was no showing of either intent or a confession except that Wright allegedly claimed the shooting to be an accident.
She added that Wright dropping the magazine from the weapon actually indicated the opposite of an intention for anyone to be hurt and there was not even a showing of the kind of negligence that could rise to manslaughter charges.
“Someone who is taking the clip out of a gun to make sure that someone doesn’t get hurt is not having an extreme indifference to the value of human life,” said Snyder. “That’s just not where this falls.”
Hill countered that only Wright gave the self-serving statement that this was an accident, and pointed to the rest of the testimony concerning the alleged abuse, the fight, and Wright concealing that Chambers was hurt even as she lay bleeding on the bedroom floor.
“We have a fight, we have Marlon Wright strike her, we have five minutes later she is shot and dead,” said Hill. “And then we have the cousin calling and saying, ‘Is she OK? I’m seeing all these cop cars come by,’ and he’s not saying it was an accident. He’s lying at that point, saying, ‘She’s perfectly fine, she’s perfectly fine,’ as he gathers his belongings into his duffel bag, runs out and moves the car, and is concealing what he did.”
Wright is scheduled for formal arraignment June 22 at the county courthouse in Media. He remains in custody without bail at the county jail in Concord.