Alleged getaway driver on trial in murder of man for his phone

WEST PALM BEACH — Four months after a Palm Beach County jury convicted two Boynton Beach brothers of murdering their son for his cellphone, a New Jersey couple returned to the same courtroom Tuesday to see if another jury would find a third man guilty of killing Dustin Deckard on a dark Delray Beach street three years ago.

While Sherman Colson may not have pulled the trigger of the gun that killed Deckard two days before his 23rd birthday, he is equally guilty, Assistant State Attorney Jacqueline Charbonneau told the 12 jurors and two alternates in opening statements.

As the driver of the getaway vehicle, Colson knew what his friends, Thomas Byrd and Kevin Sammiel, were planning, she said. He dropped them off. He waited. And once Deckard was shot in the back and was lying on Southwest 10th Avenue breathing his last breaths, Colson drove his friends away.

Defense attorney Michael Hanrahan countered that the now 26-year-old Lake Worth man, who is charged with first-degree murder and robbery, had no idea what his friends were up to. It was only after relentless pressure and goading from Boynton Beach police that he said he knew Byrd and Sammiel planned to rob Deckard.

“Boynton Beach police kept pushing him. ‘You have to tell us this. This is what I want to hear from you,’” he said, quoting those who interrogated Colson.

Hanrahan told the jurors that once they listened to tapes of Colson’s police interview, “you’ll find that Sherman didn’t know anything about a robbery until after it happened.”

Deckard, a New Jersey high school wrestling champ, had moved to Delray Beach to beat a heroin habit that had cut short his athletic career but spurred him to reach out to others who were struggling with addiction. Sober for a year, he had relapsed and his girlfriend had dropped him off at a halfway house to recover.

While she urged him to stay, he wanted to return to the apartment they shared. When she stopped answering his phone calls, he began walking home.

That’s when he was confronted by Byrd and Sammiel, Charbonneau said.

“All Dustin Deckard wanted to do was go home. But Sherman Colson, Thomas Byrd and Kevin Sammiel had other plans,” she said. “The three of them murdered him for his cellphone.”

Byrd, 26, and Sammiel, 30, both received life sentences.