Upland man acquitted in 2019 shooting
MEDIA COURTHOUSE » An Upland man has been acquitted of attempted murder in a 2019 driveby shooting after the victim and only eyewitness in the case walked back statements that he was the gunman.
Common Pleas Court Judge James Bradley acknowledged the commonwealth’s assertion that witness intimidation may have been a factor in the victim’s testimony, but said that fell far short of proving 28-yearold Rahshaeen Antonio Roberts was actually guilty in the shooting.
Assistant District Attorney Brian Doherty said during a bench trial this week that most of the facts in the case were apparent: That victim Monica Powell was shot four times while she was standing on her sister’s porch at Fourth and Highland streets at about 7:10 p.m. Jan. 28, 2019, and that charges including attempted murder and aggravated assault were applicable.
The only question remaining was the identity of the shooter, Doherty said. Powell had previously told police it was Roberts, but testified Tuesday that that was not true.
“I don’t remember what happened and I don’t know who shot me,” she told Doherty on direct examination. “I couldn’t identify anybody.”
Powell said Rahshaeen Roberts is the son of her on-again, off-again boyfriend, John Roberts, who also testified at trial. According to Powell, she had told her sister – who was courting the younger Roberts at the time – that he had herpes. Rahshaeen Roberts allegedly told the victim he was going to shoot her after hearing she had relayed that information.
Chester Police Officer Brian Andrew Stewart, the first on the scene of the shooting, said Powell had not identified who shot her on the night of the incident. No other witnesses identified a shooter either, he said.
Detective Michael Canfield said it is not uncommon for people to hold their tongues in the city due to mistrust of police and a “stop snitchin’” culture. He said he spoke with Powell the night of the shooting and a couple of days later, and that she did not identify Roberts or anyone else during those initial contacts, but she did reach out to detectives the following month and said Roberts was the shooter.
Doherty played two taped interviews with Powell in which she twice said Roberts was the perpetrator.
“I seen Rahshaeen in the back seat,” she said in the first recording. “(He) pointed a gun out the window and just started shooting.”
Powell said at trial that at the time of the first interview, she wanted someone held accountable and she couldn’t think of anyone else who had a problem with her. But she became increasingly agitated as questioning went on and said she did not wish to relive the incident.
“This young man did not shoot me, I want this to be over,” she told Doherty.
Canfield said the vehicle involved was determined to be a bright red or orange Kia Soul from surveillance video in the area, but the license plate could not be read and ownership of the vehicle was never determined.
Canfield said Powell was interviewed on tape again after detectives and the District Attorney’s Office heard that she had reconciled with John Roberts and no longer planned to go forward with the prosecution. Powell at that time indicated again that Roberts was the shooter, but said she did not wish to press charges.
Doherty also pointed to a statement Powell provided him this week indicating she did not wish to testify, that Roberts was not the shooter and that she was under a lot of stress when she first implicated him.
“I do not want to testify in this case as well as in fear of it endangering my life,” the statement said, according to Doherty.
John Roberts testified that he had visited Powell in the hospital after the shooting and the two had gotten into an argument. It was only then that she identified his son as the shooter, he said, but she later told him it was not true and that she would not testify against him.
The defendant’s brother, Daquan Roberts, also said that he had picked Rahshaeen up from his apartment in Bear,
Delaware, around 6 p.m. the night of the shooting, but the two did not return to the area until around 8 p.m., when Daqaun Roberts dropped him off at a recording studio in Upland.
Another witness said she called Rahshaeen Roberts a little after 8 p.m. and that he was at the studio at that time. She said Roberts asked to borrow her car and she picked him up from the studio about 8:15 p.m.
Doherty said phone records did not show any incoming call from that witnesses’ phone number to Rahshaeen Roberts’ phone at that time, however, and that there was no evidence Roberts was even in possession of his phone that day.
Doherty said in closing arguments that the alibi witnesses had presented confusing and at times incoherent accounts, often tripping up over when events had occurred, and that Powell likely had recanted her previous identification of Roberts as the shooter because she was afraid of retribution – as illustrated by her written statement that she feared for her life.
“This is not the first time the court has heard a victim that is not willing to prosecute, not willing to come to court,” he said. “In fact, we deal with it all the time. But that does not mean that Rahshaeen Roberts was not the one who shot her.”
But defense attorney Robert Keller said several factors injected a reasonable doubt into the case, not the least of which was the identification of Roberts as the shooter only after Powell had a fight with his father and a complete lack of corroborating evidence.
Police did not search for or recover any weapon allegedly used in the shooting, Keller said, could not tie Roberts or anyone he knows to the Kia, did not place him definitively in Chester or Upland at the time the shooting occurred and the sole witness identifying him had recanted any statements that he was the gunman.
In delivering his verdict Wednesday, Judge Bradley agreed with the defense – especially on the point about Powell’s credibility, given her relationship to the defendant’s father, her inability to identify the shooter from the outset and her testimony at trial that she now has no idea who shot her.
Powell is also facing robbery, conspiracy and related charges in an unrelated case for allegedly luring another woman into a robbery and shooting in 2020. Those charges were held over for trial earlier last week and she is scheduled for formal arraignment April 12.