Jurors must decide: Murder or accident?
There is no question 15-year-old Frank Quarles five years ago shot his 16-year-old high school classmate Michael Coogle-Robertson after an argument over a bicycle.
But now a Palm Beach County jury is deciding whether the Feb. 8, 2012 shooting on a suburban Lantana street is first-degree murder or an accidental killing that deserves a manslaughter conviction.
While Quarles has been prosecuted as an adult, defense attorney Michael Salnick asked the jurors to revisit the tragedy through photos of his client as a curly-haired freshman and through the boy’s statements to detectives that he didn’t mean to kill.
“Frankie was like any 15-year-old who couldn’t think things through,” Salnick said in his closing argument. “He didn’t exercise good judgment and clearly didn’t think about the consequences of his actions.
“Frankie has to answer for that, but it’s not premeditated first-degree murder,” urged Salnick.
But Assistant State Attorney Jill Richstone asked the panel of six women and six men not to let any feelings of sympathy affect their decision.
“This wasn’t an accident by any stretch of the imagination,” Richstone said, arguing Quarles showed “no regard whatsoever for Michael’s life. That’s why he pulled the trigger.”
During the trial, jurors were given the opportunity to hold the .38-caliber revolver and feel the force necessary to squeeze the trigger. Most tried it out.
One of the key disputes in the case is whether Quarles fired his dad’s gun once or twice and whether it could been discharged by
Prosecutors said the fatal shot hit Coogle-Robertson’s heart and caused the Santaluces High sophomore to die.
The defense pointed to witness testimony about the gun being fired one time, and Quarles’ statement to a detective that his hand was shaking and the weapon inadvertently went off.
Darron Gillion testified Thursday he was standing near Coogle-Robertson and heard him tell Quarles, “I’m not scared of any gun.”
“It was just tough talk I guess,” said a teary-eyed Gillion, a friend of both Quarles and Coogle-Robertson.
Quarles, who has been held in jail since the shooting, opted not to testify in his own defense.
But in his recorded statement to a Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s detective — played in court for the jury — Quarles confessed to confronting CoogleRobertson about 4:30 p.m. in the 3600 block of Kewanee Drive, in the Seminole Manor neighborhood near the high school.
They argued about a beachcomber bike that Quarles said had been stolen from him. CoogleRobertson had recently bought the bike from another kid who had stolen it from one of Quarles’ friends, Richstone said.
Quarles wound up leaving with the bike. But still seething over the incident, he returned about 20 minutes later with the loaded gun, which proves the shooting was planned, the prosecutors said.
In an interview with the detective about five hours after the shooting, Quarles told the detective he merely “tapped” the trigger “and it went off.
“I feel so bad, I feel like throwing up,” Quarles said then, later adding, “It's not like I intentionally wanted to shoot him, though.” have accident.
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