Trial begins in shooting of Phila. officer

The prosecutor in Eric Torres' attempted murder-trial said the defendant was determined to shoot a Philadelphia police officer - and succeeded.

The lawyer for the 33-year-old Feltonville man, however, called the shooting of Officer Edward Davies an accident that occurred as "more than five aggressive police officers" tried to subdue the struggling suspect on the floor of a neighborhood bodega.

The prosecution challenged that notion, saying that only four officers were involved and that Torres was the aggressor.

The version that a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury will believe will play out over the next few days after Wednesday's start of Torres' trial on charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault.

Torres was arrested Aug. 13, 2013, after police stopped his car at Fifth Street and Allegheny Avenue for a broken taillight.

When an officer asked Torres to get out of the car, police said, he sped off, but then crashed his 1998 BMW into a wall near his house in the 400 block of West Raymond Street.

Running from the crashed car, Torres ducked into the Almonte Mini Market at Fourth and Annsberry Streets, but was followed by four officers.

Three officers grabbed Torres and wrestled him to the floor of the bodega, and then struggled to control and handcuff him.

Davies was standing above the scrum when Torres' .45-caliber pistol went off, striking the officer in the abdomen.

Davies, then 41 and a six-year-veteran of the force, lost a large amount of blood and a kidney as a result of the gunshot.

Assistant District Attorney Louis Tumolo told the jury in his opening statement that Torres made a decision to reach back into his smashed car to retrieve his illegal pistol before running.

"He made a decision to fire that nearly fatal shot into the body of Officer Davies," Tumolo said.

Tumolo said police searched Torres' car after the shooting and found 100 packets of heroin. A search of his house across from the bodega turned up "bulk amounts" of heroin, more than 100 packages of the drug, scales and other drug-selling equipment, he said.

Defense attorney Eric Zuckerman told the jury in his opening that the shooting was an accident by a young man who feared the police. "There were more than five police officers there, and no one ever saw Eric Torres with a gun in his hand, let alone with his finger on the trigger," Zuckerman told the jury.

"The D.A. wants you to think this is an open-and-shut case, but nothing could be further from the truth."