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Detective: Couple's dispute over having a baby ended with a gunshot

Terrell Bruce (right) was arguing with his girlfriend, Martina Westcott (left), while they were driving in a Ford Expedition along the 500 block of Walnut Lane Tuesday afternoon. During the argument, Westcott shot Bruce in the head, police said. Westcott is charged with Bruce's murder.
Terrell Bruce (right) was arguing with his girlfriend, Martina Westcott (left), while they were driving in a Ford Expedition along the 500 block of Walnut Lane Tuesday afternoon. During the argument, Westcott shot Bruce in the head, police said. Westcott is charged with Bruce's murder.Read moreFACEBOOK/BRUCE FAMILY

He wanted a baby, and she didn't.

But why that lunchtime drive ended in a crash with Bruce, 33, dead of a gunshot wound to the head, remained as much a mystery as ever after Tuesday's preliminary hearing after which Westcott was held for trial for murder.

Westcott wept quietly as Philadelphia Police Homicide Detective Gregory Singleton read her Dec. 28 statement in which she admitted shooting Bruce.

Questioned by Assistant District Attorney Brian Zarallo, Singleton said Westcott voluntarily came to homicide to give a statement, turning over a cellphone, blue jeans, and a blouse she said she wore during the incident.

"She said they were having an argument about the relationship and having a baby," Singleton told Municipal Court Judge Wendy L. Pew. "She said she didn't want a baby and he was loud and she was scared."

Singleton said that Westcott told him she felt a gun on the floor of Bruce's Ford Expedition and that she picked it up and pointed it at Bruce "to scare him."

"I closed my eyes and fired one shot," Westcott said, according to the detective. He said that she looked and saw blood coming from Bruce's ear and that then the car crashed, climbing atop a parked vehicle in the 500 block of West Walnut Lane.

Singleton said Westcott told him she climbed out of the car, threw some of her clothing over a bridge, and walked to her mother's house in Roxborough.

Singleton testified that Westcott talked for about 90 minutes and said she wanted to make a statement but not answer any questions. She agreed to answer a few questions after her monologue ended.

One fact Westcott did not mention was that the gun she said she found in Bruce's car was hers. Singleton said the semiautomatic pistol, which was found under some bushes at the crash scene, was purchased Nov. 30 and registered to her.

Defense attorney Jack McMahon seemed as perplexed by the shooting as Bruce's and Westcott's relatives in the gallery of the courtroom.

When McMahon asked Singleton whether Westcott knew Bruce was dead when she left the car, the detective replied, "She said she didn't believe him to be dead because he was 'invincible.' "

In addition to an undergraduate degree from Penn, Westcott, who was being held without bail, has a master's degree in public health from Thomas Jefferson University. Before her arrest, Westcott worked as an entry-level disease surveillance investigator at the AIDS Activities Coordinating Office in the city's Department of Public Health.

Bruce, a real estate agent from East Mount Airy, had attended La Salle and Drexel Universities.