More testimony links 'model dad' to drug dealing

Despite a second day of testimony yesterday linking Terrell Pough's murder to drug dealing, his uncle still isn't convinced that the 18-year-old - celebrated in

People

magazine as a model single dad - died over an unpaid cocaine debt.

"Terrell woke up in the morning, took three buses with his [2-year-old] daughter Diamond to her day care," said Richard Nesbitt, 37, of Mount Airy, during a court recess yesterday.

"After that, Terrell went to school. After school, he went to work. After work, he picked Diamond up and went home. Next morning, he did it all again. That is the Terrell I knew."

That is the Terrell that the public mourned in the aftermath of Pough's Nov. 17, 2005, murder. Donations poured into the Diamond Pough Foundation, established at a Sovereign Bank in Mount Airy, for the little girl's education.

But when Antoine Riggins was arrested and charged with the murder, he reportedly told police that he had put a bullet into the back of Pough's head because he had "fronted" Pough $1,000 worth of cocaine and hadn't been paid.

Saul Rosario also was charged with murder for allegedly providing his friend Riggins with the gun and accompanying him to the fatal encounter.

They are being tried together. Yesterday, a second prosecution witness testified that late on the night of the murder, Riggins and Rosario showed up at the Frankford apartment of sisters Autumn Parker and Amoy Archer.

Archer is Riggins' ex-girlfriend and the mother of his son. She testified earlier this week that Riggins arrived acting "really agitated" and asked her, "If you shoot someone in the back of the head and they fall . . . are they dead?"

She said Riggins then told her he'd just shot somebody who owed him $1,000 for cocaine and had been dodging him.

Riggins, she testified, handed her a black and chrome gun, left, returned shortly after with Rosario and drove her and her sister to a birthday party at the Neshaminy Inn [in Trevose, Bucks County] in a white Honda he later told her he'd stolen from the man he shot.

Archer then told Riggins' story to her fiance, who was in federal prison on drug charges, because she thought he might find it useful.

Yesterday, Archer's sister Autumn Parker testified to the same version of events involving Riggins and Rosario.

Nesbitt, Pough's uncle, said he hopes both defendants "get the sentences they deserve: life behind bars," but he remains skeptical about drugs being the motive for Pough's murder.

"The police never searched Terrell's home," he said. "They never found the drugs he was supposed to have bought. If he purchased drugs, where were they?

"After Terrell died, we cleared out his house. We did not find a scale. We did not find a bag. If Terrell had drugs, where were they?" *