Suspect denies role in murder

The Broward sheriff’s deputy who survived a deadly ambush nearly 12 years ago said he saw one shooter, a lawyer told a Broward jury Thursday.

And that shooter, who killed Deputy Brian Tephford and wounded Deputy Corey Carbocci, was not Bernard Forbes, defense attorney Hilliard Moldof said.

In the second day of defense closing arguments, Moldof implied that Forbes’ co-defendant Eloyn Ingraham was hiding something from the deputies after Tephford pulled over a Toyota in the parking lot of Versailles Gardens, a Tamarac apartment complex parking lot. Ingraham was a passenger in the vehicle.

When Carbocci asked Ingraham to identify himself, Ingraham gave a fake name and date of birth.

During his closing argument, Moldof wondered aloud why Ingraham wasn’t more honest with the deputy, and why Ingraham would have wanted Tephford dead. “The nagging question is, why did this happen?” Moldof said. “Why would Mr. Ingraham lie about his name and date of birth? Because he knows they [police] are going to go back and look it up.”

Moldof did not speculate as to what Ingraham might have thought police would find, but Ingraham’s lawyer protested and asked for a mistrial. A potential motive for the ambush has not been addressed at the trial — Ingraham was a suspect in other crimes, and investigators later tied him and Forbes to a kidnapping and robbery of a Tamarac clothing store weeks before the Tephford murder.

But because Ingraham and Forbes were acquitted of the kidnapping and robbery charges and neither was charged in other crimes, Broward Circuit Judge Paul Backman has not allowed attorneys to answer the question of why the defendants would have been willing to kill cops.

That didn’t stop Moldof from asking the question, however.

Prosecutor Mike Satz argued earlier this week that Ingraham called Forbes and a third co-defendant, Andre Delancy, during the traffic stop.

Two shooters were responsible for the carnage, according to a prosecution expert who testified during the trial that opened in June and wrapped up testimony in late January.

But Carbocci mentioned only one shooter in his testimony. Moldof has said he doesn’t have to prove who the shooter was as long as he can demonstrate that it wasn’t his client.

That was the thrust of his closing argument Thursday.