Trial begins in Jewelers Row abduction

THE HEIST - millions in cash, jewelry and glitzy watches - was going to change the lives of the men parked in the burgundy van, prosecutors said.

It fell apart almost immediately, though, on April 4, just minutes after Basil Buie, his cousin Salahudin Shaheed, and Khayree Gay allegedly abducted and tased a 53-year-old employee of National Watch and Diamond Exchange, at 8th and Chestnut streets on Jewelers Row. The woman didn't know anything about the store's security codes, alarms or the combination to any safe there.

"When the victim went to work, she expected it to be like any other day. April 4 was not like any other day. It was horror. It was terror. It was torture," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeanine Linehan told the jury yesterday during opening remarks in Buie and Shaheed's trial.

Buie, 23, and Shaheed, 35, are on trial in U.S. District Court for kidnapping, attempted robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery in connection with the abduction. Gay, 31, pleaded guilty in August and will testify against the other two men for the government, Linehan said.

Linehan told the jurors that the most compelling testimony will come from the victim herself, who thought she had been shot, assumed she would be raped and feared for her life for most of the harrowing 2 1/2-hour ride that included severe beatings. The ordeal ended in a cemetery, where the men had allegedly dumped her, still handcuffed and shackled.

Linehan painted Shaheed as the mastermind behind the abduction, and when it collapsed, she said, he took his frustrations out on the victim.

"He beat her unmercifully," she told the jury.

Lawrence Bozzelli, Shaheed's attorney, attacked Gay and two of the government's other witnesses, including Gay's girlfriend and a man who drove the van to South Carolina after the abduction.

"By the end of the trial, you'll be left with more questions than answers," Bozzelli said.

Bozzelli also planned to question the victim's description of two of the abductors. Two descriptions seemed to fit with Gay and Buie, though her description of the third man was 6 feet tall and thin, he said.

Bozzelli asked Shaheed, listed at 5-5, to stand up.

Buie's attorney, Arnold Joseph, did not give an opening statement.

The prosecution's first witness, Janice Davis, said she was driving past the cemetery in Darby when she saw the victim screaming and waving, her hair messy and clothes torn. Davis said she came back, called 9-1-1 and consoled the woman until police got there.

"I hugged her," Davis said. "I was just holding on to her. She was frantic. She was hysterical."

Linehan said the government also planned to show videos of the men at a Wawa and would show the jury a rubber glove Shaheed allegedly broke while punching the victim.

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