Jail time for gunman in fatal West Chester shooting

WEST CHESTER >> A Coatesville man who authorities contended shot and killed a West Chester teenager he had never met in a sham drug deal pleaded guilty – somewhat uncertainly – to the crime Thursday on the eve of his trial.

Jury selection had been scheduled to begin in the case of Darrell Woodward when he decided

to take an offer by the prosecution that would give him the possibility of someday being released from prison, rather than risk the possibility of a conviction for first- or second-degree murder in the 2015 death of Cristian Santiago. Either of the charges would have carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.

The trial was set to open on Monday.

Instead, Woodward, 21, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, robbery, and criminal conspiracy and was sentenced by Common Pleas Judge James P. MacElree II to 40 to 80 years in state prison. It is to date the longest sentence of any of the four men who were charged in the case. Gerald Myers, the person who set the events in motion that led to Santiago’s death, has yet to be sentenced.

But during a description of what the prosecution contended Woodward had done involving Santiago’s death, he seemed to back away from taking responsibility.

“I didn’t shoot the victim,” Woodward announced, after having just seconds before admitted that he fired the fatal shot. “It not true.” But after a few moments of discussion with his attorney, Alexander Silow of West Chester, Woodward changed his tune.

When the prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Thomas Ost-Prisco, again stated that during the robbery Woodward shot and killed Santiago, MacElree asked whether he admitted that. “Yes,” Woodward said sullenly.

Santiago was 17 and a student at B. Reed Henderson High School in West Chester when he agreed to meet people he knew to sell them marijuana. He was not aware that Myers, who had earlier attempted to rob him, had enlisted Woodward and another of his cousins, Bryon Stevens, to help rob him of his drugs and money.

Seated in the courtroom as they have been through the cases of each of the defendants were members of Santiago’s family, including his parents. Previously, they have spoken at length of the heartbreak they feel over his death and the impact his loss has had on them.

“I just want to say that my son was a good kid,” father Freddie Santiago told MacElree in brief remarks. “I am here to support and to love him. They say he was a drug dealer, but that was just the surface. That wasn’t who he was.”

Also present were West Chester Detective Stan Billie and Chester County Detective Robert Balchunis, the lead investigators in the case.

According to Ost-Prisco, Woodward was contacted in the late afternoon of Aug. 20, 2015, by Myers to ask him for their help in robbing a drug dealer. He and Stevens, who would supply the car used in the robbery, were told they would get $600 and a quarter pound of the drug.

The two men traveled from Coatesville to West Chester in Stevens’ Volkswagen, and met Myers and a woman at the Lukoil gas station on Hannum Avenue. They waited there for Santiago to arrive. When he did, Woodward – who was a stranger to Santiago – told him to get in the car to avoid being recorded on surveillance cameras.

When Santiago got in the car, Stevens drove away from the station on West Wayne Street. At some point he heard Woodward draw a gun on Santiago and the teenager say, “Come on, man.” Two seconds later, he heard a gunshot, Stevens subsequently told police. “Reach again,” Woodward said to Santiago.

According to the prosecution’s case, the events leading up to Santiago’s death began in the afternoon of Aug. 20, 2015, when Myers saw Santiago – with whom he had earlier disputes – walking down West Washington Street in the borough. He told a friend, Onray Winfield, who was sitting in a car with him, “I’m gonna stain that guy later.”

Myers then allegedly started talking with Winfield about setting up a sham drug deal with Santiago, who was known to sell marijuana. Myers said he was going to “beat him up,” and get his cousins from Coatesville to “bring guns, throw him in a car, and shoot him.”

Winfield, then 19, later related the story to investigators in the case – Chester County Detective Sgt. Michael McGinnis and West Chester Police Detective Andrew McFarlane – in an interview that was recorded a few hours after the shooting.

Santiago’s lifeless body was found at approximately 10:20 p.m. on the side of the road in the 700 block of Hillsdale Road, a block or so west of the Chester County Art Association, near the Bradford Square townhouse development. A passing motorist had alerted police to the body, thinking it may have been a pedestrian who had been struck while walking on the unlit stretch of road.

In his statement, Winfield did not tell police why Myers had a grudge against Santiago or wanted to harm him. But he said that after talking about the plot with Winfield in his car, Myers came to a house on West Washington where he was visiting a girlfriend and announced that it was “time to do this.”

In her testimony in Myers trial in February, Miller said that there had been jealousy of Santiago because he had been “flexing” on social media, showing off the results of his drug dealing business. There had been an earlier attempt at a robbery of Santiago that failed, she said.

Winfield, who police learned had been discussing selling marijuana with Santiago via Twitter messages and cell phone texts, contacted Santiago via Twitter and asked him if he could get a “grizzle,” street drug code for a gram of marijuana. According to the criminal complaint filed in the case, Winfield told the detectives that Santiago agreed to meet him at the LukOil convenience store at the intersection of West Wayne Avenue and Hannum Avenue, not far away.

Myers was found guilty of third degree murder, robbery and conspiracy, and will be sentenced later, Stevens and Winfield both pleaded guilty to third degree murder and testified at Myers trial.