Closing arguments in Route 29 murder case

TRENTON >> An attorney for one of the Route 29 murder suspects played the old switcheroo in his closing argument to jurors Tuesday, pinning the crime on a man who admitted lifting the car used in the drive-by slay.

Defense attorney Patrick O’ Hara said prosecutors didn’ t have physical evidence showing his client Andre Romero was inside a stolen Chrysler Sebring on Jan. 30, 2012.

However, there was plenty of car thief Louis Alvarado’s DNA inside the car – a fingerprint on the outside of the vehicle and a cigarette butt with his saliva on it – that detectives simply “turned their backs” on.

“What links my client, for sure, with that car? There’s more evidence this guy was there,” O’Hara said, fingering his pen toward Alvarado’s name on an easel.

O’Hara disputed that Romero, charged with murder along with suspected killer William “Bill Bill” Mitchell, ever opened fire on a white Ford Taurus driven by slay victim Daquan Dowling.

Mitchell and Romero sat silently in the courtroom as the prosecutor looked to deliver the kill shot that could send them to prison for life.

In a dramatic twist, after Assistant Prosecutor James Scott finished stacking up the “overwhelming evidence” against the two defendants, he pointed to them in the courtroom – Romero seated behind Mitchell – and told jurors they were similarly seated when they riddled Dowling’s car with bullets.

Mitchell was riding shotgun, Romero right behind him on the passenger’s side, when Mitchell announced he was going to “tear up the car.” They fired five times in three seconds, four shots striking the driver’s side, Scott said. “That’s purpose to kill the

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