Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
‘JUSTICE FOR BIANCA’
Suspect faces trial; friends, family of Bianca Roberson show up for preliminary hearing
WEST GOSHEN » In a brief proceeding Thursday that had been anticipated since his arrest last month on charges that he shot and killed a beloved recent Rustin High School graduate in an apparent “road rage” incident, suspect David Desper waived his preliminary hearing.
The case against Desper, 28, of Trainer, Delaware County, now moves Chester County Common Pleas Court for trial a slew of charges connected to the fatal shooting of Bianca Roberson, 18, on Route 100 back in June.
Desper said little as Magisterial District Judge William Kraut of West Goshen went over his rights and asked about his decision to waive the matter. Looking on in the small courtroom less than five miles from the scene where Desper allegedly fired the shot that struck Roberson in the head as they played a game of vehicular “cat and mouse” along the entrance to Route 202 in West Goshen were members of the victim’s family, their friends, and police involved in the case.
The random crime – there is no suggestion that the two had any connection before their fateful encounter – shocked the region, if not the nation, and led to a multi-state manhunt for the driver of a red Chevrolet Silverado pickup seen fleeing the scene in a surveillance video. Police were eventually able to trace the truck — as well as a bullet fragment — to Desper, a construction contractor with no serious criminal record.
The preliminary hearing had been scheduled for weeks since Desper’s arrest on July 2, with Roberson’s parents vowing at one point to confront Desper about why he had shot and killed their daughter, who was preparing for college. But it quickly became apparent as Kraut presided over the matter that Desper would not make the prosecution put on the minimal necessary evidence to have him bound over for trial.
Thursday’s events began before 7 a.m., as the parking lot outside the Chester County Government Services Center, where the West Goshen district court
is located, began to fill with both supporters of the Roberson family, who hugged and greeted one another in the morning air, and members of the news media waiting for Desper’s arrival.
Outside the main door to the building, which was guarded by security officers and deputies from the county Sheriff’s Department, two longtime friends of Bianca Roberson’s father Rodney Roberson held up a large banner with two photos of the victim.
“Justice for Bianca Nikol Roberson who was murdered on Wednesday June 28 2017,” it read. The banner was displayed by Al Pettigrew and Kim McCrae, two Philadelphia men who said they had known her father since childhood and had served with him in the U.S. Marines.
McCrae also wore a Tshirt that had been printed with the victim’s face, and which many others in the crowd of about 50 people had donned. The shirt was emblazoned with a quote from her father, in which he stated, “There’s noting else I could say to the guy, except we love her and we miss her, and you stole our daughter from us.”
Security inside and outside the building, which is home for a number of county offices, was unusually tight in advance of Desper’s court proceeding. In addition to the normal staffing of security personnel and deputies inside the lobby, there were deputies outside the front entrance to the court itself and in the interior hallway leading to the court lobby, as well as three deputies inside the courtroom itself.
Shortly before 8 a.m., Rodney Roberson and Michelle Roberson, the victim’s mother, were escorted into the courtroom by the lead investigators in the case, West Goshen Detective Jose Torres and Chester County Detective Ben Martin. Several West Goshen officers,, who had worked tirelessly in the hunt for the red pickup, already were in the courtroom. Attorneys for both sides – Assistant District Attorneys Chad Maloney and Christopher Miller and defense counsel Dan McGarrigle of Media – were also in the courtroom, which holds only about two dozen seats.
Around 8:05 a.m., Desper was led into the courtroom by deputies. The tall man with a medium build and a well-trimmed beard and black hair was wearing a dark grey shirt, dark tie, and black pants. He was handcuffed and shackled.
When Kraut called the case, McGarrigle told him that his client had made the decision to waive the preliminary hearing, but with the stipulation that should McGarrigle decide to file a pretrial habeas corpus motion challenging the prosecution’s evidence after he reviewed it he would be permitted to do so.
Kraut asked Desper if that was his understanding, and whether he was making a knowing decision to give up his right to the hearing – at which McGarrigle could challenge the evidence brought by Maloney and Miller and cross-examine their witnesses. Desper would also have the right to testify in his own defense should he choose.
“Is that what you wish to do?” Kraut asked Desper of the waiver. “Yes, your honor,” the defendant said softly but firmly as he stood at the defense table. Kraut ordered him returned to Chester County Prison, where he is being held without bail.
The decision to waive a preliminary hearing in many cases is made by a defendant with the intention of eventually pleading guilty to some or all of the charges filed against him or her, but does not technically include an admission of guilt. Once the case is transferred to Common Pleas Court, the attorney for the defendant can negotiate with the prosecutor assigned to the case about what an appropriate sentence and disposition of the charges would be.
Take, for example, the cases of several men who were charged with seconddegree murder in the 2015 shooting death of a West Chester teenager. Although all could have been sentenced to life in prison without parole for their participation in the homicide, they ultimately pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, a lesser charge, and were sentence to terms up to 40 to 80 years in state prison.
The District Attorney’s Office often times takes into account a defendant’s decision to spare the prosecution from going through a preliminary hearing in the decision of what sentence to offer a defendant. However, the decision is not made in a vacuum; the family of a victim in the case is always consulted, as are the police who handled the case.
As Desper signed the paperwork necessary to complete his waiver, Michelle Roberson bowed her head and began to cry silently, wiping a tear from her eye with a tissue that one of the family supporters who had been allowed inside the courtroom had handed to her. Desper kept his eyes to the front of the room, not looking back at those in the audience. Members of his family had made the decision to stay away from the proceeding.
The proceeding concluded at 8:10 a.m.
Roberson died of a single gunshot wound to the head, while she apparently jockeyed for position with Desper at a portion where Route 100 narrows to one lane where it connects to Route 202 about 5:30 p.m. on June 28. Roberson’s car went off the road, down and embankment and slammed into a tree.
Police initially did not know that Roberson’s death as a homicide until an autopsy concluded that she had been shot.
Viewing a video surveillance camera located on the Route 100 spur, police identified a faded red pickup truck as being the vehicle most likely belonging to the assailant. An eyewitness, who told police he was driving in front of Roberson’s 2009 Chevrolet Malibu when he heard a loud noise that sounded like a gunshot, saw the pickup racing away.
The incident sparked a massive manhunt that would involve the West Goshen police and Chester County detectives, as well as countless other departments in the tri-state area and thousands of interested persons across the country.
According to West Goshen officials, the video surveillance was able to ascertain that the red pickup had sped south on Route 202, then exited onto Paoli Pike. The direction of travel from there led police to believe the truck was headed towards Delaware County.
Police were able to use a fragment of the bullet that killed Roberson to identify the murder weapon as a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson handgun. When they were eventually able to track the red Chevrolet Silverado to an address in Concord, Delaware County, they were able to identify Desper as the owner. Going to his home in Trainer, they found the alleged murder weapon in a bedroom, and unused ammunition in a trash can outside the home, according to the affidavit filed by Torres, a former state trooper, and Martin, who came to the D.A.’s Office from East Pikeland police.
Desper had purchased the gun legally in 2015, and had a permit to carry it – which means he could have it in his vehicle while he drove.
When he announced Desper’s arrest at a news conference, District Attorney Tom Hogan called Roberson’s death “a savage, brutal act.” Hogan noted the victim was “gunned down because somebody didn’t want to give way” on a roadway.
Outside in the court lobby after the Thursday proceeding, more than a dozen wellwishes knelt or bowed their head in prayer as Everett “T.J.” Butcher, a WCHE-AM radio host acting as an unofficial adviser to the family, explained what the waiver of a preliminary hearing means. “Above all, let’s hope that justice will be served,” he said.
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.