Quiet words from a little boy: 'Kev shot me'
The tender-looking 7-year-old boy stepped into the courtroom, nervously fingering his blue tie as he walked by the jury.
As he stood at the witness stand, he appeared so small that the thin, upright microphone reached his nose. Some jurors smiled toward the little boy.
Assistant District Attorney Namratha Ravikant asked Rafeek Griffin what happened to him shortly after midnight Nov. 27, 2007, at his home on Huntingdon Street near Marshall, in the Fairhill section of North Philadelphia.
"When Kevin shot me," Rafeek testified, his soft voice rising.
Rafeek said that he was lying on his mother's bed watching "SpongeBob SquarePants" when Kevin Fletcher - a friend of his older brother Mohammed's - shot him once in the leg.
Fletcher, 16, is on trial before a Common Pleas jury on charges of aggravated assault and possession of an instrument of crime.
In a timid voice, Rafeek testified that another of his brother's friends, Angel Concepcion, also was in the second-floor bedroom that day. While there, Concepcion retrieved bullets from the bedroom closet, loaded them in a gun, then placed the gun on the bed, the boy said.
Shortly afterward, "Kevin picked up the gun," Rafeek testified. "Then he looked at it." As he was about to put it back on the bed, "He shot me," Rafeek said.
The young boy said under direct examination that he did not know where Concepcion got the gun, but under questioning by defense attorney Natasha Taylor-Smith, he testified that Concepcion had also retrieved the gun from the bedroom closet.
Rafeek previously testified at a preliminary hearing that Fletcher had shot him "by accident."
Authorities have said that the shooting occurred when the children were in the house unsupervised.
Rafeek's mother, Charene Stalling, was at a bar at the time. She was found guilty of endangering the welfare of children and recklessly endangering another person, and was sentenced in January to 11 1/2 to 23 months in jail, with credit for time served, followed by four years' probation, according to court records.
Yesterday in court, Police Officer David Anthony Gilmore testified that on Nov. 27 he received a radio call of the shooting at 12:41 a.m. He went to Episcopal Hospital, where Rafeek was first treated, and then followed him when the boy was transferred to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children. At St. Christopher's, Gilmore said, Rafeek told him, "Kev did it. . . . Kev shot me."
Detective Shawn Leahy, of the East Detective Division, told jurors that he had searched Rafeek's home that morning and found a .25-caliber handgun in a living-room closet and 17 .38-caliber live rounds in a boot in the closet of the bedroom where Rafeek was shot.
Detective Phil Nordo testified that after obtaining a search warrant for Fletcher's house, also on Huntingdon near Marshall, he found a 9mm handgun.
Authorities do not have ballistics evidence tying any particular gun to the shooting such as a bullet casing or a bullet fragment from Rafeek's body.
The trial continues today before Judge Rosalyn Robinson. *
