Testimony: Fatal shooting prompted by debt disagreement

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Two men shot each other during an argument about a $100 debt, witnesses testified Friday during a preliminary hearing for the sole survivor of the October shootout, Damien Ashley, 29.

Ashley is accused of killing Wyatt Lanell Gaza, 28, after arguing with him on the porch of a home in the 1600 block of Jenny Lind Street in McKeesport on Oct. 14.

Ashley was wounded in the shooting but survived. Gaza died from a gunshot wound to the chest.

Magisterial District Judge Eugene Ricciardi held for court charges of homicide, prohibited possession of a firearm and carrying a firearm without a license against Ashley, but dismissed a tampering with evidence charge after he said prosecutors did not present evidence to support it during Friday’s preliminary hearing at City Court, Downtown.

Kizzi Gaza, aunt of Wyatt Gaza, testified that she was home with her nephew when a man and a woman pulled up in a car outside. A man came out of the car and Gaza met him on the porch, she said.

She could hear the two men arguing and stepped out to the porch to ask if everything was OK, she said. The men were standing close, face to face, she said. Gaza told her everything was fine and to go back inside, she said.

“Not even a minute later I heard the gunshots,” she said.

She and other relatives ran out the back of the home and hid on a balcony, she said, until a neighbor told them there was no one in front of the apartment.

Ms. Gaza then walked around the outside of her house to the front and found her nephew lying in the front doorway, dead.

The woman in the car drove Ashley, who was also shot, to a hospital, Allegheny County Police Detective Kevin McCue testified. The woman was taken into custody and told police that she saw Ashley pull out a gun and shoot Gaza.

Detective McCue said Gaza owed the woman $100 and Ashley was confronting him about that debt when the shots were fired.

Both men were convicted felons. Ashley was convicted of felony burglary, theft and conspiracy charges in 2010. In 2008 he faced two counts of attempted homicide, but the charges were not prosecuted.

Gaza was previously convicted of felony charges of escape, fleeing a police officer and accidents involving death or personal injury in three incidents in 2012 and 2009, court records show.