Deliberations to continue Tuesday in case of slain informant

A federal jury on Friday began deliberating the fate of reputed Pittsburgh heroin kingpin Price Montgomery, accused of gunning down a federal witness, and his top associate but didn’t reach a verdict and will return next week.

Montgomery and James Perrin went on trial last week before U.S. District Judge Mark Hornak on charges related to running a large-scale heroin ring supplied out of Newark, N.J.

Montgomery is accused of killing Tina Crawford, 34, on Aug. 22, 2014, about an hour before she was to meet with federal prosecutors about the drug operation.

She had told agents and her lawyer that she had been running drugs for Montgomery on trips to New Jersey and was about to lay out what she knew to Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Nescott.

She died in a storm of bullets inside her mother, Patsy’s, garage in the Hill District. Patsy was wounded.

In his closing argument, Assistant U.S. Attorney Shaun Sweeney told the jury that Montgomery had the motive to kill her because his world had crashed down around him June 8, 2014.

That’s when he and Perrin were arrested in a car after a trip back from New Jersey, where agents said they bought heroin.

A subsequent search that day of Montgomery’s house on Mount Washington turned up 1,500 bricks of heroin worth $300,000 as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and 16 guns.

“Everything he had worked so hard for was taken away from him,” Mr. Sweeney said of Montgomery’s drug enterprise. He suggested Montgomery asked himself, “Who did this to me?”

He settled on Tina Crawford, his courier, whose house in Manchester was raided the following day. He visited her after that search and she told him she didn’t say anything to implicate the man she considered her “brother,” Mr. Sweeney said.

But Tina was indeed talking to the police and had decided to cooperate. Through the summer she’d been in contact with one of Montgomery’s girlfriends, Khrysta Brown. Among the things she told her, within 24 hours of the killing, was that she had a meeting coming up with her lawyer, Blaine Jones.

A half hour before the killing, Mr. Sweeney said, Ms. Brown texted Montgomery.

He and another man then appeared in the driveway of Patsy Crawford’s home and shot both women as they were getting into a car, Mr. Sweeney said.

“This is an execution,” he told the jury. “This is not a drive-by.”

He said Montgomery dropped his cell phone at the scene and police matched his DNA to it. In addition, while Montgomery claimed to be in New Jersey on the day of the slaying, the phone he dropped was used to call another girlfriend in New Jersey, Ivy Magu, four times that day, Mr. Sweeney said, proving he was in Pittsburgh.

He said Montgomery was the only person who had reason to kill Ms. Crawford.

“Because he knew she was on her way to talk to a federal prosecutor in this building,” he said. “He knew she could bury him. So he killed her.”

Perrin is not charged in the slaying, but Mr. Sweeney said the evidence shows he was Montgomery’s partner in the drug business. Perrin was with Montgomery in a car during that June 8 bust and had a “giant bag of heroin” at his feet after returning from a trip to Newark, Mr. Sweeney said.

“They weren’t going to Dairy Queen,” he said.

Wiretaps and surveillance also indicate Perrin was involved in the heroin trade with Montgomery, Mr. Sweeney said. A key government witness, Jeremiah Pashuta, said he bought heroin directly from Perrin and sold stolen guns to him. The guns were intended to provide “security” for the drug business, Mr. Sweeney said.

The attorneys for the two defendants presented no witnesses and saved their defense for the closing arguments.

One of Montgomery’s lawyers, Jay McCamic, said that the government is not able to prove that Montgomery shot Ms. Crawford. The only physical evidence tying him to the scene is the cell phone, but Mr. McCamic said drug rings pass cell phones around and pointed out that federal agents had recovered some 80 phones in the case. Finding one at the scene that Montgomery had used “doesn’t mean he’s carrying it” during the killing, he said.

He suggested that others besides Montgomery, such as his New Jersey connections, had motive to kill Ms. Crawford. He also questioned how shooters who appeared to carry out what the prosecution characterized as an executionstyle hit would be so careless as to drop an incriminating cell phone.

“Do professionals leave this?” he asked, holding up the phone. He suggested that someone out to pin the killing on Montgomery planted that phone.

Attorney Michael DeRiso, who represents Perrin, argued as he did in his opening that most of the case was about Montgomery, not his client. He said agents didn’t even know who Perrin was until he showed up on wiretaps in April 2014.

He questioned Pashuta’s credibility, as well, calling him a “dirtbag” who was selling information to prosecutors to get out of prison early in his own case.

“They scraped the bottom of the barrel for this guy,” he said.

He suggested that Perrin is guilty only of associating with Montgomery.

“There’s a lot of stupid stuff James Perrin did,” he said, “but he’s not a drug dealer.”

The jury deliberated for about a half hour Friday and will resume Tuesday because court is closed Monday for Veterans Day.