Witness says officer questioned teen’s actions in shooting
PITTSBURGH >> A witness in the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer said Wednesday he saw the officer standing on the sidewalk, panicking, saying, “I don’t know why I shot him. I don’t know why I fired.”
The trial of former East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld continued into a second day Wednesday in a Pittsburgh courtroom.
John Leach, a neighbor who lives a few houses from the site of the June shooting, said he was on his front porch when Rosfeld fired three bullets into 17-year-old Antwon Rose II after pulling over an unlicensed taxicab suspected to have been used in a driveby shooting minutes earlier. Rose was a front-seat passenger in the cab and was shot as he fled.
Rosfeld, 30, faces a charge of criminal homicide.
Leach, the second witness to testify Wednesday, said that after the shooting, he was watching Rosfeld on the sidewalk nearby saying repeatedly, “I don’t know why I shot him. I don’t know why I fired.”
He said that later, he saw other officers consoling Rosfeld as he was crying, bent over and hyperventilating. Rosfeld, he said, looked as if he was about to pass out.
Defense attorney Patrick Thomassey had tried to discredit Leach’s testimony, asking him if he was trying to “juice things up.” Leach said, “I don’t have any reason to.”
Patrick Shattuck said Wednesday he was in a senior center across the street for a council meeting. Five to seven minutes after the shooting, Shattuck said Rosfeld, with swollen, red eyes, entered the building and said, “Why did he do that? Why did he do that? Why did he take that out of his pocket?”
East Pittsburgh Mayor Louis J. Payne, who was also there, said he, too, heard Rosfeld say, “Why did he do that?” but said he didn’t hear the comment about the pocket.
Rosfeld was in the senior center only a few minutes when another officer came in and told him he couldn’t be there. Rosfeld left, taking with him a rifle he had brought inside, Shattuck said.
Thomassey said Rosfeld did not intend to shoot anyone that day and did nothing wrong in his fatal encounter with Rose.
“You think Michael Rosfeld got up on the 19th of June and thought he was going to shoot someone? Of course not,” he said.
Allegheny Housing Authority officer Charles Rozzo, who responded to the shooting, testified that a distraught Rosfeld asked him how Rose was and if he“saw the gun.” It’s unclear what gun Rosfeld was