Lawyer: Real estate agent shot boyfriend 'in self-defense'

A defense attorney for a Fishtown woman charged with shooting her boyfriend to death in the hallway outside her apartment early Wednesday morning said on Saturday that it "was a case of self-defense."

"He was in her apartment without permission," attorney Trevan Borum said of Terry Corrigan IV, 33. "He was assaulting her. That's what the facts are. She had every right to defend herself in her own home."

Jeanette Wakefield, 37, who worked as a real estate agent and had been recently affiliated with Coldwell Banker Preferred's Center City office, was charged Wednesday with murder and possession of an instrument of crime.

Borum and another lawyer, Timothy Tarpey, were both privately retained by Wakefield.

Police have said the shooting occurred about 3:20 a.m. Wednesday in the hallway outside Wakefield's unit in the Chandler apartment building at 1050 E. Montgomery Ave., in the shadow of I-95. Homicide Capt. John Ryan has said that Corrigan was trying to get back into his girlfriend's apartment when Wakefield opened the door and shot him once in the face. Wakefield then called 911.

Wakefield's two children, ages 9 and 10, were in the apartment at the time, Ryan said. Wakefield had a legal permit to carry the 9mm semiautomatic gun, he said.

Corrigan, who lived on the 3300 block of Coral Street in Kensington and worked as a roofer, had a heroin addiction and had been previously arrested for selling drugs. Still, his parents and Wakefield's neighbors said they had never known him to be abusive to Wakefield, whom they said had a problem with alcohol. It was not immediately known if either Corrigan or Wakefield was drinking or was on drugs at the time of the shooting.

Corrigan's father, Terry Corrigan III, said in an interview Friday that his sister Patty was on the phone with Wakefield at the time of the shooting. She overheard Wakefield arguing through the apartment door with his son, the father said, blaming him for breaking a table in her apartment. The sister then heard one or two gunshots.

Asked Saturday to explain differing accounts of what allegedly occurred and how Corrigan ended up from initially being in the apartment to the hallway, Borum said he had no further comment. Wakefield, who is in custody at the Riverside Correctional Facility, faces an Oct. 18 preliminary hearing on the charges.