At ex's trial, woman tells of being shot in face

On Christmas 2006, Marcel Crump allegedly gave his girlfriend a bullet to the face.

The girlfriend testified yesterday in Common Pleas Court in a soft, nervous voice that she was sitting in the passenger seat of her Chrysler Sebring when Crump got out of the car and she "heard a loud bang."

Alyce Ennis, now 31, said she then opened the passenger door of the car, parked near 12th and Diamond streets in North Philadelphia, and stumbled into the darkness.

She ran toward a street light.

"I eventually felt my tongue hanging out of my mouth," she told a jury on the opening day of Crump's trial on attempted murder, aggravated assault and weapons charges.

"The part of my face that was shot, I didn't feel," she said. "I touched my face. I put my tongue in my mouth."

In his opening statement yesterday, Assistant District Attorney Mark Cipolletti told the jury that Crump wasn't thinking about his family on Christmas. Rather, he contended, Crump's mind was filled with "jealousy" and "sadistic rage."

"He and his friends noticed a change in" Ennis, the prosecutor said. "He was afraid she had moved on. It infuriated him."

Crump, 31, grew up with Ennis in North Philadelphia. They began dating when she was 16. The couple have two daughters, who have lived with her.

Ennis testified that about 11 p.m. Dec. 24, 2006, Crump came to her house and told her to get in the Chrysler. At that time, they were living apart, in different parts of the city.

"He told me we had to talk," she said.

On a half-hour drive to Crump's grandmother's house near Marvine and Diamond streets, Ennis testified that "he was acting weird, like spaced out."

"He was just like cursing, yelling, like he wasn't talking to me," saying things like, "I was just changing my appearance, like I keep changing my face," she said.

In the car, he waved his right hand around in his jacket pocket "like he had a gun," she said.

After a brief stop inside the grandmother's house, Crump ordered her back in the car, then drove a short distance before stopping near 12th and Diamond streets, she said.

Before he got out of the car, "it looked like he was wiping down . . . the steering wheel," she testified.

Shortly after, she heard the bang, then realized she was shot.

Authorities contend Crump fired two shots at Ennis with a silver revolver about 12:45 a.m. Christmas Day. One shot entered her left cheek, came out her right cheek, then grazed her right arm.

Ennis testified that as she was running, she saw Crump run down an alleyway. She told police it was her boyfriend who shot her.

Testimony in the trial before Judge Rayford Means is expected to conclude today.

Court records and past news articles show Crump was convicted in 1999 of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of his cousin, Joseph Day, 22, on June 1, 1997, in their North Philadelphia home. Then-Common Pleas Judge Robert Latrone found the shooting to be an accident and sentenced Crump to 18 to 36 months in prison on the first-degree misdemeanor conviction. *